UMANA NATURA

“Thus, all visible things do not quite perish, for nature recreates one thing from another, and nothing but from the death of another arises".

- Tito Lucrezio Caro (De Rerum Natura, vv.262-264)

There are connections between all forms of life, points of intersection that allow us to perceive the synchrony and diachrony between the animal, human and plant worlds. There are time lines which, while following cycles of different lengths, come together in the “here and now”, in the dimension of the present. At a time when the consequences of increasingly evident climate change are upsetting the balance in the Mediterranean area and the world at large, we have travelled to a remote and uncontaminated region. In this suspended place, we witnessed an incredible natural resilience. This work explores and symbolizes the poly-rhythmic nature of life cycles, their interaction beyond human interference. This research triggers a short-circuit between the slow and seemingly suspended process of ancestral nature and the more obvious transience of humans, and invites us to reflect on the perception of change, birth, mutation and death. At the centre of this visual investigation is a special territory in Europe, Umbria, known for its biodiversity and unique climatic conditions, where time seems to have its deepest roots. A harsh yet gentle, pure and revealing land, of uncontaminated woods and centenarian human beings, where it is possible to perceive the now rare original balance, where "nothing is born from nothing" and the echo of the ancestors still reverberates.