OF EARTH AND ART
In 2023, it was decided to extend the company’s aims to embrace the most engaging of all the humanities: art. And so, Ballasanti: of Earth and Art was born, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, art theorist and critic, in collaboration with Gaia, art enthusiast and lover of her Etna roots.
Ballasanti’s Of Earth and Art project proposes the cultivation of a relationship: the relationship between art and nature, which has been inherent to art since its very inception. The project’s concept is that artists will leave their oft-evolving impression on an ever-changing landscape. The project has multiple references, from the Land Art movement to more recent art parks, to The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono: “… a pretext for asking ourselves: how will we leave the world and who will come after us?
What does the word community mean? How can we feel close to those we do not know?”.
A project where place is central and not just the frame, a place where the artist accepts that nature will change and complete their work. Any works we put forward will be born of our wish to amaze, to introduce poetry and art where nature and art are in dialogue, creating and changing shape … an open-air exhibition, with works of art created with stone, leaves, branches and tree trunks, rustic materials which belong to the land, involving local workers and craftspeople.
Works, some of which will be housed in a gallery, while others will be left in the open to become one with the land. The project speaks to artists’ ability to open up new vistas, to pose new questions, in an unconventional artistic language. A poetic horizon in which the artist positively takes on their environment, and their work takes root in a spatial, natural, physical and historical context. Until their work merges and becomes part of its setting, even if by contrast.