title: The Water Guardian
typology: Installation
event: Terrena - Tracciati di Land Art in Bassa Romagna
location: Parco Golfera, Lugo (RA) Italy
year: 2018
The serpent with sinuous movements emerges from the depths of the earth, rising from the dark hidden and protected gorges. A mysterious and mysterious animal, the custodian of an immense primordial power, guardian of pulsating energy, it evokes the spiral, the line and the circle and this is why it represents the cycle of life-death-rebirth, the perpetual return, the regeneration.
This for me is an important concept in the solstice period in which has been inaugurated the first edition of “TERRENA-traces of Land Art in Lower Romagna”, an event to which I was invited to participate with my work “La Guardiana delle acque”, now permanent, inside the Golfera Park’s lake, Lugo Ravenna (IT). I represent the serpent in its sinuous form with dried lotus flowers made of ceramics, which come out of iron stalks immersed in the lake. I chose the shape of the dried flowers of the lotus because it attracts me aesthetically but also because the fact that they are represented in their dry form remembers the moment that symbolically precedes the “rebirth” in the cycle of Life. The snake changing its outline reminds of the perpetual return, the regeneration that Mother Earth accomplishes in the Life / Death / Rebirth cycle.
title: The Suite of Goddess Snake
typology: Installation and Performance
event: Terrena - Tracciati di Land Art in Bassa Romagna
location: Podere Pantaleone, Bagnacavallo (RA) Italy
year: 2018
“The serpent with sinuous movements emerges from the depths of the earth, rising from the dark hidden and protected gorges. A chthonic and mysterious animal, custodian of an immense primordial power, guardian of pulsating energy, it evokes the spiral, the line and the circle and this is why it represents the cycle of life-death-rebirth, the perpetual return, the regeneration.”
Respecting the symbolic theme of the snake, which I chose for “TERRENA-traces of Land Art in Lower Romagna”, I realized another permanent work, inside the natural oasis “Podere Pantaleone” in Bagnacavallo (RA). In this environment, I wanted it to manifest itself in its creeping form, made up of many wooden rings, positioned on the ground in a carpet. Starting from the entrance the snake, in this natural and wild place emerges from the earth, to wrap itself up to the trunks of the trees and to the objects already present.
To remain linked to the work “The guardian of the waters” I traced inside the wooden circles, small seeds with luminescent paint, which recall the holes inside the flower of the dry lotus, so as to remain visible even during the night.
Performance/Celebration: “The Suite of the Goddess Snake”
Music by Gian Luca Simoncini - Interpretation by Sofia Quintavalli in the “Hymn to Isis”.
Isis, sister and wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, Goddess of maternity and fertility, queen of the sky, lady of the underworld, of snakes and of the magical arts. The Goddess symbol of Transformation, power of death and rebirth, of regeneration and renewal, one of the oldest faces of the Great Paleolithic Goddess, which in the Neolithic takes on an iconography of its own with the symbol of the serpent. The main function of the Goddess in her new aspect of Serpent was to guarantee the continuity of vital energy and offer regeneration to every exhausted existence. The symbols are keys that open us access to new visions and transformations!
For the opening, I specially created a night-time performance that took place around the snake. The metallic sound of the idiophone represented these four moments of human interiority: stasis, confusion, death, rebirth, interspersed with the voice of the actress who recited some passages from the “Hymn to Isis”. I danced around the snake, in the dark, overturning every trunk that formed the snake, which turned red from white and into the illuminated head, symbolizing the change of the suit.
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