SHANGAI
Interactive Land Art installation, 40 bamboo 2,10 m (h.), colored with water-based enamel
Artistic project of environmental requalification
2nd Edition of the National Prize of Land Art 2014, Park of Villa Breda, Padua, Italy
The game of Shangai (also known as Mikado) requires a high dose of patience, attention and delicate slowness of movement, all virtues increasingly disadvantaged in the digital age. Furthermore the psycho-physical balance guaranteed by the dimension of the game is here the model of symbiotic relationship between man and nature, more and more necessary in modern day life. This installation reactivates the man-nature and art-nature circularity, art is no longer an icon but an opportunity for human interactions on a symbolic level and for cross-cultural and ecosystemic collective events. However, the installation inevitably places the user in an active role and the natural element, with which the work is entirely composed, in a passive role of instrument. The question is: how is our relationship with the environment? We have the duty to follow a new ethic and to lead this relationship far away from a logic of domination.
