Emeritus Professor SASHA GRISHIN Australian National University
Silvia Tuccimei and the crafting of space
“If someone loves a flower of which just one example
exists among all the millions and millions of stars,
that is enough to make him happy when he looks at
the stars. He tells himself ‘My flower is up there somewhere...’
”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Silvia Tuccimei is an artist who loves to bring together that
which at first glance would appear as irreconcilable states of
being: permanence and ephemerality; solidity and fragility; chaos
and order; organic and inorganic as well as animate and inanimate.
Through an act of alchemy she seeks to create a physical sculptural
object that serves as a conduit into a metaphysical realm,
where our perceptions of the known are brought into question.
They are works that allow us to peer into infinity and there catch
a glimpse of ourselves.
In 2016 Tuccimei was selected, for the second time, to exhibit
at Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi in Sydney – the world’s most
popular outdoors sculpture exhibition – and her piece was also
selected by a curatorial jury to subsequently travel to Sculpture by
the Sea at Cottesloe in Perth in Western Australia. The sculpture,
titled Flower Power, consists of a huge, abstracted six-petal flower
outline, about 300cm across, fabricated out of mirrored stainless
steel. This shape is repeated in two further identical modules, but
each of smaller proportions, so that when the three modules line
up, they become like a reflective secret passageway that mirrors
its surroundings together with the viewer. If one can imagine the
world as a huge looking glass with the earth being an echo of the
sky, Tuccimei’s floral steel entrances capture an envelope of space
between the earth and the sky that reflects both and allows us to
pass through it.
The space created within the gleaming orbit of Flower Power
is transient, a fleeting vision that is kinetic and changes with the
movement of a cloud or a gust of wind. It is a space where that
which one moment appears solid will dissolve and fade into an
animated mass and the sheer multiplicity of reflections will create
a moving fabric of vision. The form of the flower has become
a poignant universal symbol for freedom, especially the freedom
to dream for a better existence. Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables,
when characterising the noble bishop, provides what could be a
description of Tuccimei’s sculpture when he writes, “Was not that
narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the worship
of God in the most delicate of His works and in the most sublime?
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in – what more could
he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” With
allusions to Voltaire’s Candide, Hugo refers to the holistic idea of
the flower as a pathway to the celestial vision.
Tuccimei, working within the popular sculptural tradition of
installed environments, creates within her symbolically charged
floral form an environment that intentionally questions the nature
of being. The title, Flower Power, already hints at her pattern
of thought – on one hand it may allude to the popularist hippie
anthems – but on the other, the title already carries within it a
basic contradiction. A flower is fragile and vulnerable, but the idea
of power implies strength and force. This meeting of opposites is
inherent in the materials – steel that is powerful and long lasting
– while a mirror finish, regardless of its actual manufacture, suggests
a fleeting and ever changing brittle surface, impermanence.
For me, the sculptural installation Flower Power in the final
analysis is about the beauty and fragility of life. Nowhere is this
more clearly explained than in The Little Prince. Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry writes, “For millions of years flowers have been producing
thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the
same. And it is not serious, trying to understand why flowers go
to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It is
not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It is
no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat
red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique
flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet,
one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning,
just like that, without even realizing what he is doing - that isn’t
important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example
exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that is enough
to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself ‘My
flower is up there somewhere...’ But if the sheep eats the flower,
then for him it is as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that is
not important?”
Tuccimei’s Flower Power is a contemplative installation, one
that cannot be understood visually, but must be experienced with
the heart, or as the Little Prince explains: “On ne voit bien qu’avec
le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” (“One sees clearly
only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye”). If
one allows the heart to enter into her enchanted flower garden of
the Flower Power, one may perceive that life is beautiful, despite
its fragility, and that every life, like every flower, is precious, unique
and has the whole universe reflected within its being.
Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA
Australian National University
Flower Power,