Milano Scultura 2025

ALESSANDRA LA MARCA
DANIELE NITTI SOTRES
MARIANGELA ZABATINO

Curated by Claudia Ponzi

Critical text by Claudia Ponzi (Milano 11.02.25)
All works

The sculptures by Alessandra La Marca, Daniele Nitti Sotres, and Mariangela Zabatino take us on a journey through the memory of a sacred place—a memory that seems lost but continues to live on through art. They tell stories of distant times, of a civilization now forgotten; a kingdom whispered only by the oldest books. A place that defies certainty: perhaps it is an organism that has survived through time, perhaps the core of knowledge, or maybe a sacred civilization, extinct due to progress yet still alive in the silence of memory.

La Marca reveals us organisms that have survived through the centuries, guarded by the primordial force of nature. Pictorial sculptures, lichens, which have resisted the infinite transformations and extinctions of the planet. Scientific studies have shown that these beings, extraordinary in their resilience, were able to live in remote places of the Earth and even in space, thanks to their incredible ability to adapt. Merlin Sheldrake in his book “Entangled Life” recounts many of the passages lived by these extraordinary organisms. The first fossils can be dated to four hundred million years ago, but it is possible that similar organisms were present even before.

Nitti, like an alchemist, creates a dialogue between the recovered stone fragments and the alchemical transformation of metals by creating a harmony of contrasts. Rock jewels become philosopher’s stone, an elixir of long life, a panacea that leads to inner enlightenment. The achievement of knowledge is protected by metallic arms patinated, which as “clothes” emphasize not only the sacredness of nature, but also its extraordinary ability to resist and renew itself, with an intensity that goes beyond time and space.

The ceramic sculptures by Zabatino evoke the history of an ancient and primordial civilization, fragments of a remote past. Observing her works with a careful and reflective look, one perceives a reference to the “filled Persian” – the deposit of archaeological finds due to the collection and subsequent burial in 480 B.C. on the Acropolis of Athens of the remains of votive statues, sacred materials and ex-voto after the Persian wars. Zabatino, as in a dream, reimagines the signs of that distant tradition, before the vases and vestiges were destroyed. The artist gives us the memory of an era, revealing the deep and inescapable link that unites man to death through time.