Maria Giovanna Zanella

Exploring the body as a place of vulnerability and friction, as well as passion, desire, and impulses, Maria Giovanna Zanella's work gives shape to a physicality that is living matter. “Love and eroticism are transversal,” says the artist, “they represent all the highs and lows we are capable of.” In the case of the work in competition, entitled Buoni, the discourse is entrusted to a sculpture made of bread: a set of elements that recall fleshy masses, anatomical fragments, as well as organic fossils or magmatic concretions. The different qualities of flour and yeast used, and the variable temperatures of the specially constructed oven, have determined combinations of color, density, and texture that are largely unpredictable, with a result (both formal and symbolic) that manages to synthesize the immediacy of primitive art with the complexity of contemporary excesses. Equally emblematic of nourishment and perishability, abundance and waste, Buoni embodies a decomposed yet prolific organism, unpredictable and contradictory but irresistible, which enriches the thematic focus of his artistic practice with further meanings: on the one hand, ‘demystifying’ the body to show it free of stigmas, fears, and taboos; on the other, contemplating its “titanic fragility and beauty,” thus accepting the power and limitations of human experience.

Sara Boggio