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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,

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