1993 Galleria L’Isola, Rome
Materials: travertine, orchids,
essence of honeysuckle
Dimensions: m 2,5 x 2,7 x h 1,7
The atrocities of war in the former Yugoslavia, the carnage and mass rapes, have influenced Maria Dompè’s creation of this work filled with social messages. The viewer is welcomed by a perfume of flowers leading to the front of a travertine wall, refined by Islamic inspired rock grids (musharabie), but which remains nonetheless a wall warning not to go further. Behind the wall there is, in fact, the sign of barbarous acts committed, a rectangle formed also by superimposed slabs of travertine recalls to mind, in its form and dimensions, a bed whose central planks have been broken and bent near the bottom. White orchids placed in the centre of the bed leave open the hope of a spiritual rebirth, a hope as difficult as it is necessary when confronted by the horrors of war. When combined with the scent of the honeysuckle, the orchids evoke a fragility and delicacy that remain present and alive though they have been subjugated by violence.
Laura Iamurri