​Against my broken ribs, your breast like a flower

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Sterling silver, silk, aluminium

Variable dimensions

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2021

 

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Against my broken ribs, your breast like a flower can be considered as the first chapter of a wider investigation around uncertain histologies. A personal artistic research that aims to analyse the intersection between texture, materials and the
relationship between the objects created and the body they originate from.
Histology is the branch of biology that studies the anatomy of tissues. After a brief testing with aluminium, I selected silver and silk as main materials of experimentation. I found a certain resonance among them; noble, elegant and organic. I wanted to create something readable on diverse levels, delicate but uncanny. As the human body is composed of layers of tissues, the objects presented detect a deep connection among matter usually foreign to each other, by biological structure.

Thin silver sheets, oxidation, burns, neutral colours of silk, lace or inner bone texture. The pieces are connected by the most fragile stitches or suture lines. My attempt consisted in
pushing the limits of the materials, highlighting the breakability and the fragility of both, trying to expand the concept of ‘ashes and bones’. The
latin term for ashes is cinis or favilla. If we take a look at the dictionary along with the several synonyms concerning destruction, grave...we
can find ‘spent love’. The trace of our experiences is surely time consuming, so the hours spent on the silver surface; tracing the lines, stitching and
reconnecting those ephemeral matters with surgical attention. All the pieces created are mainly based on my body measures, they expose a fracture and its
aesthetic qualities, they sting.
 

 

What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs, your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace, Yes it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.
 

John Berger- and our faces, my heart, brief as photos

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ph Nicola Baldazzi / Giulia Lanza