PLANTING SCULPTURES, SCULPTING PLANTS

Natsuko Uchino, Mélanie Bordas & Martin Planchaud, Daniel Dewar & Gregory Gicquel, Dages Juvelier Keates
Curated by Marianna Vecellio

Villa di Geggiano
In collaboration with Emanuela Campoli

Dear friends,
The organization of Planting Sculptures, Sculpting Plants is evolving rapidly and I am starting to envision the final restitution of this experience together at Villa Geggiano.

Following the project’s vibrant nature, the invited artists have decided to involve other participants turning the initiative into a communal platform of ideas and researches. The various collective practices will begin to interact with each other in the spirit of a composting living matter, and I expect improvised moments of restitution based on the project’s spontaneous soul. The historic Villa and its vegetable garden will serve as a backdrop to the artistic activities, and vice versa, the artistic activities will become the ideal terrain for working on bodies and movements.
Natsuko will plant sculptures and sculpt plants combining farming, life and collapse. Adobe, clay forms, organic elements, left over material, in the principle of recycling and composting, will turn the orto into a living landscape, a living scultpure.

The garden will be transformed into a place of sharing and collaboration, where one can suspend judgment and await answers, where experiences grow and one can encounter the notion of life. In the days leading up to the project’s opening, Natsuko will engage possible participants in a moment of shared discussion, offering them the opportunity to become active actors in the Saturday performance, embodying the experience and its major thematic. The week will be preparatory to the construction of the ceremonial banquet on fermentation, communal thinking and sharing. Chef Mélanie Bordas called Martin Planchaud to join the drafting of a collective meal. During the retreat the two cuisiniers will create a designed proposal for the event focused on metamorphosis, collapse and rebirth. Cuisine embodies metamorphosis through the transformation of elements and ingredients. We will encounter Mélanie and Martin sharing their knowledge in a dialectic spirit and the creation of new form of culinary thinking.

The banquet will be a participative celebration: artists, sound, plants, landscape, and the cycle of the day embodied by the sunset’s light, will entangle in a unique vibrational and multisensorial experience. In the chapel, distant but resonating to the general presentation, a silent encounter of different artistic languages: embroidery, tapestry, and carving. Daniel Dewar and Gregory Gicquel will offer us a moment of intimacy and solitude in which craftsmanship, nature and hybridity collide.
With my warmest regards,

Looking forward sharing all this with you all in Geggiano,
Marianna