designed during the residency at
LiberaIdea, Civitanova Marche CV - IT

Anatomical Arboreal Totems
Suspended Bronchial Totem, Nervous Oculus Totem, Cardiac Amulet

This collection of sculptures began as an act of reading the landscape —an attentive, almost diagnostic gaze over the terrain of Civitanova Alta, a Medieval town in Central Italy.

Walking its streets and edges during the pruning season, the process unfolds like a radiography: an attempt to see through the visible surface and access the inner structures that sustain the landscape. Branches cut from cherry and maritime pine trees are approached as exposed fragments of a larger earthly body —organs temporarily brought to light. Their forms suggest alveoli, vessels, nervous filaments. Their textures and rhythms point to a latent physiology.

Through gathering, observing, and selecting, the landscape is interpreted as a living system, its genius loci emerging not as an abstract spirit, but as something embodied, anatomical, and breathing, foregrounding a deeper correspondence between arboreal and human phenomenologies —both physical and metaphysical.

Nervous Oculus Totem,
Maritime Pine pruned branches, fish twine, acrilic paint, eye painted by Paola Tassetti

Suspended Bronchial Totem,
Cherry tree pruned branches, trim, acrilic paint, artificial flower

At LiberaIdea, in dialogue with artist Paola Tassetti, the collected materials are reassembled through gestures of stitching and binding. The cherry wood branches articulate into a lung-like structure where cuts, joints, and trims remain visible—traces of both wound and care. The maritime pine branches, tensioned by rope, recall a nervous system or an Ophanim, suggesting a living system that sees with a metaphysical eye.

A Heart Amulet closes the series. Conceived at the end of the residency period while wandering along the shores of Monte Conero, with roots collected from the beach, it evokes the iconography of the sacred heart, but also the Wild heart of Life seen from Life.

The process is one of listening and translating, amplifying what is already inscribed within matter —allowing vegetal structures to articulate themselves as physiological diagrams, the found form guiding the emergence of meaning.

The sculptures thus emerge as provisional anatomies of place.
The totems and the amulet are currently part of the garden of LiberaIdea.