MALUM GRANATUM

2018
The work of the artist is focused on the investigation and development of the relationship between man and nature, through a comparison between the human body anatomy and the vegetables internal structures. Among the several media adopted by Amendola there is the “x-ray photography”, intended as a scientific artifice which inspects the matter we are made of. At the same time, it invites the spectator to pause on the essence of reality, hidden behind its external appearance. The elements subjected to this analysis are vegetal organisms which evoke a sort of humanization of nature itself. A nature which tries to come into contact with human beings and to communicate with them through a means which they can recognize. The intervention proposed in Sala Santa Rita is part of these observations. In fact, becoming part of the analysis of the human-nature relationship, it takes off the aspect of original sacredness, reflected by the evocative site of the Ex Baroque church. Close to the apse there is a big-sized pomegranate x-ray photography suspended.

Site-specific installation

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curated by Lori Adragna and Maria Arcidiacono - assistant Caterina Assunti

Sala Santa Rita - Roma

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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.