Grounded

Grounded is a project presented for the exhibition “La fonte dell’opera”, curated by Davide Silvioli. The exhibition location was a garden inside the Veio Park, which gave the opportunity to create a subsoil investigation device.

Intercepting the Mesopotamian tale “The Descent of Ištar into the Underworld”, Grounded is prepared as a collective excavation action in which multiple individuals are invited to join in this simple and primordial but at the same time revealing gesture. A contemporary catabasis to come into contact with a depth teeming with worms, insects and roots. It is reality that reveals all its horror and the dark implications of our world. Cavities are also tunnels to enter into the urgent issues of our time: by digging, touching and manipulating the earth, voids are generated, embodiments of a possible different relationship with the world.

The voids created during the performative act were then filled with flows of cement poured directly into them by the artist and which, once solidified and extracted, generated non-homogeneous, monstrous sculptures, characterized by the collaboration between human and non-human.