Photo Pierluigi Di Pietro

The fruit, which is retro-illuminated and exposed at the centre of the altar, assumes a sacral position. The balausta top shape itself, a residue of the flower calyx, recalls a crown, thus emphasizing the concepts of regality and transcendence. Among the myths and the meanings which have surrounded the pomegranate – which symbolizes abundance and fertility, but also honesty and probity –, the artist highlights the communion sense. In fact, the fruit contains in its interior many little grains; everyone can be identified as an unique individual, but also strictly connected to the others. And it is exactly this union which produces its thriving condition. Amendola images here a fruit without its seeds, as a metaphor of the current society: the human being, more and more isolated, risks losing any vital and creative contact with the nature essence and with their peers. At the bottom of the altar some glasses/stem glasses containing pomegranate juice extracted from the same grains which are absent in the x-ray photography. This presence/absence suggests a transformation in the cyclic passage from life to death, hoping for a possible and aware re-birth of humanity in community with the whole universe.