2011

Samples of earth, gravel, asphalt, paving stones.
200x100x75 cm

In a reflection on the relationship between man and his own environment, the urban areas concerned by transformation processes lead the gaze towards the ground, where the traces of all the various processes which make a territory inhabitable are visible.

This work was carried out in the Isola neighborhood in Milan, which for many years has been subjected to a new town-planning approach based on capitalistic territorialization policies, which attribute new value to an area by modifying the entire landscape, together with the social life.
The focus here is on the surfaces of the urban territory, to be found well below the usual threshold of interest, beneath those layers separating man from the earth element, and on those holes temporarily torn open by building sites that make it possible to penetrate below such surfaces. Through a sort of geological approach, samples of the various surfaces which characterize the urban fabric were extracted and placed side by side: paving stones, asphalt, gravel, and soil.

> The work was created for the exhibition Green Desire/Desiderio verde, edited by Valeria Mancinelli, Elena Mantoni, Camilla Pin, at Sassetti Cultura, Quartiere Isola, Milan, 2011.