2004 Malga Costa – Val di Sella Trento, (Italy)
Permanent environmental intervention
Materials: wood, tree bark, incense, flowers (sea lavender and ferns) for the event Plants positioned: Rosa canina, Prunus, Euonimus Europalus
Musical performance by Markus Stockhausen and Tara Bouman
Dimensions: diameter m 40, total surface area 950 cubic meters
Along the itinerary of Arte Stella, Maria Dompè created Water Emergency: an incursion “en plein” air, projected deliberately for the forest habitat that hosts it.
The fulcrum of the work is an ancient “calchera” of Trento, an oven that was once used to bake limestone. Here, where the fire burned uninterruptedly for eight days and eight nights, you breathe the atmosphere of time slowed down, in tune with the rhythms of the soul and of the cycles of nature.
On inauguration day, the oven was covered with ferns and sea lavender flowers, that seem to grow directly from the rock: the hope is that a way of life can regenerate the earth, impoverished by the indiscriminate use of the water resources. The work of man, tangible sign of his impact on nature, becomes the driving force for a mandala that inserts itself into nature with a lightness of a plant embroidery.
The texture of the work is the same as its environment: ferns, branches, tree bark map the circular geometry of an abyss, from which emerges, in order to reconcile itself with the totality of the universe. This “garden of the soul”, as defined by the artist, is the interior reserve from which partakes the process of continual psychic and energetic metamorphosis of the individual. The stone of the “calchera,” transformed into a magical flowering, evokes the same ritual alchemy.
The dynamism emitted from the mandala recalls the music of Markus Stockhausen and Tara Bouman, amplified by the natural shape and joined with the cosmic harmony. A perfumed fragrance of incense and floral elements accentuate the synesthesia-like experience and interactive value of the work that, by means of the strong sensorial impact, strives to rediscover the world of the “house of being”: a flame always lit, perennial sprouts, inexhaustible well from which to fuel one’s own infinite vocation.
Maria Egizia Fiaschetti