Kami

A spirit painted at altitude — Kami at Champlas du Col, where the Giro d'Italia passes.

Kami is a mural created by artist Neve in October 2020 in Champlas du Col, Sestriere, for E-Distribuzione (Enel Group) as part of the Cabine in Rosa – Giro d'Italia 2020 project.

"Kami" is a large-scale mural painted on an electrical distribution cabin at Champlas du Col, a hamlet near Sestriere in the Turin province, as part of the Cabine in Rosa project — E-Distribuzione's programme of site-specific urban art interventions along the route of the Giro d'Italia. The 2020 edition of the Giro ran from October 3 to October 25, postponed from its traditional May dates due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the twelve cabins produced for the edition were unveiled simultaneously with the race stages, tracing a parallel tour of Italy from Palermo to Asti. Sestriere and its surrounding alpine territory — among them Champlas du Col, which sits on the road between Cesana Torinese and Sestriere — have a long history in the Giro, as one of the high mountain passes that has repeatedly decided the race. The cabin sits on this road, in the open alpine landscape. The work takes its title from the Japanese word kami — the spirits or gods of the Shinto tradition that inhabit natural phenomena: mountains, wind, water, trees. The figure painted on the cabin's main face is a woman rendered entirely in cold blue tones — the colour of altitude, of winter air, of the mountain at a distance. Her hair flows outward in deep red, a thermal contrast against the blue. A gold bicycle wheel appears as an earring. Around her: bare white tree branches, a crystalline snowflake pattern, stars. The imagery belongs to the mountain and to the race that climbs it.