Soil – 2001, Carrara white marble
Federica Malatesta, Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara
4° ed. “the earth”
Location: Cuneo, C.so Dante 32.
In the alchemical imagination, earth is – together with water, air and fire – one of the four elements on which cosmos, life and nature are based on. Man has found in earth his first nourishment and his existential foundation, and learned how to cultivate it to get the fruits he needed to survive . Starting from these reflections, the artist realized an hyper realistic big hand in white marble in the act of holding a wooden root and some soil. The skin of the fingers and the palm is soft, smooth and shiny and it contrasts with the roughness of the marble soil. The root and the soil hold in the hand seems to recall the shape of a heart or the head of a moose . In the harmonic contact, the hand encloses a nucleus of life, an energy from which other forms or other sensations can arise.