“Grazie madre per questo piano antico, senza il quale sarei solo cosa secca e immota”. 
The work starts with these words, which are written on the very first part of the sculpture. With days, months, years, thoughts becomes thicker and they flow on the roll. With time the sculpture grows and words become a solid body, revealing 
their tridimensional nature that has a specific weight. 
The aluminium is treated with pourings of fat matter in order to make it look like a vertical stratification of geologic eras.

Passaggi catartici

Starting from the strong connection the artist has with Joseph Beuys’ artistic practice, she used felt to completely bend her mother’s body. She thought about this because of the symbiotic relationship she has with the parent, and because of the love she feels and she tries to protect forever. Through this action the artist’s energy is shifted to her mother in order to minimize the entropy of the world and the passing of time. Felt represents the energy that through the material is stored and needs to be used to front difficulties in the second part of her mother’s life, during the age of maturity.

PASSWORD: L1u2c3r4e5#

Shifting my energy to you

Suspicious eyes analyze with attention a dry territory, characterized by cracks. After that, a face full of clay appears, and its firm gaze in camera challenge the audience during all the duration of the video. In the meantime the clay dries creating cracks, elements which are part also of the most solid body. The background sound is a collage of glaciers melting and cracking while they change with time. The relationship between nature and interiority comes up in a parallelism that accompanies the audience in a slow and muted trip.

PASSWORD: L1u2c3r4e5#

Sono una crepa

The words flow interrupted by long moments of silence and coming from the inside. Thoughts are made in a moment of solitude during an art residency at Joya:AiR in Andalucia, Spain. The strong impact with nature forces to face the body and to think about social constructs that are part of western culture. European instruction doesn’t deal with the physical body and with the “selvatico” that is in every human being, instead it tends to tame it. But sooner or later “the body calls” and everything that contributed to anesthetize the essence it’s not strong enough to stop that animal and disruptive power. “SELVATICA” is a never-ending fight for freedom.

PASSWORD: L1u2c3r4e5#


SELVATICA

The inspirational place that gave to the artist the idea for another work called “Souls engaged in defeating entropy” sculpture, had been freezed in sixteen limited edition polaroids. All numbered and signed.

Souls engaged in defeating entropy

This work is witness to an unspoken bond between the artist and nature. After “asking” the land to borrow some earth in order to make raw bricks for the performance “La casa vivente” at MUDEC (Milan), Lucrezia Costa wanted to return the favor by giving it back to the righteous holder after using it. Hence, there are two movements involved: a dislocation and a subsequent relocation, and a circular flow that brings back to the origin what she seized only temporarily.

Unspoken bond - returning a favor

A heavy soul is like a stone, they are both a precious treasure often marginalized. They’re heavy because they can feel the weight of life and they are stuck with their “roots” in the ground. This is the reason why the artist decided to create a cradle for a stone. She wanted to give it the possibility to feel for a while how it is to be light, how it is to fly and not to feel the burden of being. She decided to cover the iron structure with felt because it’s a material that can preserve heat and protect from energy’s dispersion.

Cradle for heavy souls

It is a sculptural seat made of concrete and recycled stones that has the purpose to remind that is important being phisically uncomfortable sometimes, because this generates attention and mental ferment as a consequence. It is installed on a seat with a small table and a lamp because it has to look uncomfortable and creepy as the waiting rooms are. The hand bag has the aim to show that it can be carried and used everytime someone has the need. The seat has also the aim of remembering that is fundamental to let the world leave his sign on us because we are the fossil body, a body that is marked by external influences that makes a life. This seat is used in “Stare scomodi per essere pt.2” 
as a performative element.


Stare scomodi per essere 

Two millennial elms called “The Preston Twins” stood for centuries at the edge of the Preston Park in Brighton, UK. In 2019 one of the two elms was felled because it was declared infected by a lethal 
disease that killed him. But connections can survive out of the matter. What it’s meant to be together can’t be torn apart or separated so the artist wanted to create a new type of connection between the twins. A connection that can’t be infected because it’s not physical, but it’s kind of a spiritual connection that happens through a gift of the author. On January 8th 2022, the artist goes on the site of “The Preston Twins” and digs two small holes in the ground: the first inside the living huge hollow trunk and the second inside what remains of the other felled elm. She put the two tiny boxes underground and she covers them again with earth. The artist created a third small glass box that she brought home with the pink opal, the message and two tiny pieces of the Twins’ barks so they can metaphorically live together in that tiny space forever.


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Lucrezia Costa