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© Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, a project by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, 2020. Project Partner: MiC.
All archival images and photographs taken at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii are used with permission from MiC-Ministry of Culture-Archaeological Park of Pompeii. Any copies or reproductions are strictly forbidden.

Marzia Migliora, with Matteo Lucchetti. Intrecci (Weavings)

Commitments 41    07•04•2022

1. Excerpt from:

Marzia Migliora
Coltre (Mulch), 2021
video, 2’36”
Produced by Edithing Art Department
Courtesy the Artist and Galleria Lia Rumma Milan/Naples

2–10. Drawings from the series:

Marzia Migliora
Coltre (Mulch), 2021
mixed technique and collage
each 31 x 24 cm
Courtesy the Artist and Galleria Lia Rumma Milan/Naples

11. Video:

Marzia Migliora
Coltre (Mulch), 2021
video, 2’36”
Produced by Edithing Art Department
Courtesy the Artist and Galleria Lia Rumma Milan/Naples

In January 2020, just a few months before the global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I had the good fortune to accompany Marzia Migliora literally into the bowels of the earth, on an exploration of the Realmonte and Racalmuto deep salt mines in Sicily, for the first site inspection that was to lead to the creation of the virtual reality video The Spectre of Malthus. This work addresses the incompatibility between the growth of the world’s population and the increase in food production through the lens of the famous English demographer Thomas Malthus, updating his thinking to the contemporary situation.
The idea was very simple: to take the viewers of the video hundreds of metres below sea level, into the man-made tunnels dug out of the sodium chloride formed millions of years before, in order to reflect together, through a series of animations created by the artist, on human hunger as a millennial driver and extractor of fossil, animal and, alas!, also human resources. The sedimentation of the sea water, trapped by the tectonic movements that led to the emergence of these Sicilian geographical features, still exists in our lives today in the form of pure salt, which enhances the flavours of our dishes and nourishes us with the mineral salts we need for our survival. Ancient eras meet on our tables, making food and its dynamics a very important issue, intertwined as it is with the political, historical and geographical evolution of our species. The project is part of the artist’s decade-long research into the common imagery that governs our relationship with food and, more generally, with the world of agriculture and the dynamics of industrial production that dominate it. Interweaving drawings, collages and installations, in her work Migliora combines the analysis of scenarios of colonialism and exploitation with ideas and practices of sustainability and necessary radicalism. Her collages investigate unexpected kinships between species, to quote the expression used by Donna Haraway, and generate sensitive information against the backdrop of our prejudices that misinform our actions, which are increasingly crucial in the context of the climate crisis.
More than a year later, in response to Pompeii Commitment‘s invitation, we organised another trip, this time to the boundless resources of the Pompeii Archaeological Park’s storerooms, and more specifically to the organic department, where most of the findings related, but not limited, to food are kept. Bread, peaches, pomegranates, ready meals crystallised in their containers, wicker baskets and other textiles revealing the interwoven fibres that have withstood the test of time and are here today to testify to an everyday life that humanises the archaeological site, and brings Pompeii closer to our lives.
Her piece entitled Intrecci (Weavings), consisting of a video and nine drawings entitled Coltre/Mulch, takes as its starting point the iconic letter written by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, describing the eruption of 79 AD, where the cloud emitted by Vesuvius is compared to the shape of a pine tree with an enormous trunk, whose branches multiplied in the sky. This plant form restores an organic dimension, belonging to the sphere of the natural, to the human tragedy experienced by the Roman city, as well as creating an image with an extremely strong evocative power. The eruption of the volcano as an event that freezes the urban scene, transforming it into an uninhabited desert, where mantles of ash are deposited over everything. A scene that the artist imagines as a scenario in which organic material is allowed to settle, as in a mulch, an agricultural technique in which blankets of leaves or other plant residues form a cover that promotes the re-fertilisation of the soil. In fact, in each drawing, which vaguely seems to illustrate Pliny’s words, fragments of wall paintings, views of the city, plaster casts of a trunk, or a dog, are interwoven with new vegetal, organic forms, extending the life of those findings and connecting them with new future landscapes. In the video, the artist’s conceptual link between the archaeological park and the technique of mulching – typical of sustainable agronomic practices – is made clear by a shower of pine needles, often used for these operations, and here also recalls the metaphor used by Pliny to describe the eruption.
The tectonic movements that shook Pompeii before 79 AD are different from those of Pangaea, linked today to the scarcity of what has – preciously – remained, and not to the abundance of salt deposits, but the material handled by Migliora responds to an almost equal desire to shorten epochal distances in order to interweave narratives and imagery. A gesture aimed at transforming the archaeological heritage into a kind of fertilising agent that allows the diverse knowledge, which has long remained in a state of mulch, to germinate in new forms. ML

Home page image: Marzia Migliora, Coltre (Mulch) (video still), 2021. Courtesy the Artist and Galleria Lia Rumma Milan/Naples

Marzia Migliora (Alessandria, 1972. Lives and works in Turin) is an artist who uses a wide range of languages, including photography, video, sound, performance, installation and drawing, to create works that elevate the simplest human activities to moments able to tell shreds of collective history. Recurring themes in her work are memory as a tool for articulating the present as well as the observation of employment as a mean of participation in the social sphere. In most of her works, the element of absence invites the viewer to an exclusive relationship with the work and its potential meanings. Among the various institutions that have exhibited the work of Migliora: Museum of Contemporary Art of the castle of Rivoli, Rivoli, Turin; Prada Foundation, Milan; Merz Foundation, Turin; MART, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto; MA * GA, Gallarate art museum, Gallarate; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Italian Pavilion, 56a. International Art Exhibition, Venice; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin; MAMbo, Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, Bologna; FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool; Ca ‘Rezzonico, Venice; Maxxi Museum, National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; OGR Officinie Grandi Riparazioni, Turin; Carré d’Art, Nîmes; Serlachius Museum, Mänttä; The MAGASIN Center National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble.

Matteo Lucchetti is a curator, art historian and writer. He is co-founder of the project “Orchestre delle Trasformazione”, a curatorial agency that promotes new artistic imaginaries for the 2030 agenda. Since 2011 he has curated with Judith Wielander “Visible”, a research project and support for socially engaged artistic practices in a global context of Pistoletto Foundation and Zegna Foundation. He worked as curator of exhibitions and the public program at the BAK in Utrecht in 2017-2018, and was curator of the 16th Rome Quadrennial. Among the most recent curatorial projects: Marzia Migliora. The spectrum of Malthus, MA * GA, Gallarate; Sammy Baloji. Other Tales, Lunds Konsthall and Kunsthal Aarhus, 2020; Marinella Senatore: Piazza Universale. Social Stages, Queens Museum, New York, 2017; De Rerum Rurale, 16th Rome Quadrennial, 2016; Don’t Embarrass the Bureau, Lunds Konsthall, 2014; Enacting Populism, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012. He was curator in residence at Para Site (Hong Kong), Kadist Art Foundation (Paris) and AIR (Antwerp). He is a faculty member of the Unidee Academy, Biella. He is visiting professor at HISK, Ghent; Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam; Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Antwerp and Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. His critical contributions have appeared in Mousse Magazine, Manifesta Journal and Art Agenda. Lucchetti lives and works between Brussels and Rome.

 

 

Pompeii Commitment

Marzia Migliora, with Matteo Lucchetti. Intrecci (Weavings)

Commitments 41 07•04•2022

Marzia Migliora
Intrecci

From that distance it was not clear from which mountain the cloud was rising,

although it was found afterwards to be Vesuvius.

La sua forma era simile ad un pino più che a qualsiasi altro albero.

Credo, perché prima un vigoroso soffio d’aria, intatto, la spinse in su, poi, sminuito, l’abbandonò a se stessa…

…o, anche perché il suo peso la vinse, la nube si estenuava in un ampio ombrello

a tratti riluceva d’immacolato biancore, a tratti appariva sporca,

screziata di macchie secondo il prevalere della cenere

o della terra che aveva sollevato con sé