Supernova
Light Installation (cm 60 x 60 each)
2023
Supernova is a light installation comprising four backlit works, conceived to evoke the power and beauty of a stellar explosion. The propulsive energy of the threads of light and the centrifugal movement of the textual textures allude to this. When a very large star exhausts its fuel, it collapses in on itself, triggering a gigantic explosion that can shine as brightly as an entire galaxy.
Time and Memory
The work presents itself as a resonant device between past and present. The light that resurfaces is the result of an event that occurred millions of years ago. Within this temporal gap, a dimension connected to memory opens. What reaches us is not reality itself but a trace that has traversed time and space. During its journey, it encounters interstellar media, dust, and gas, and undergoes absorption and dispersion. Like the light of a supernova, memory never coincides with the original event but reactivates it by transforming it. Every act of recollection is a passage through emotional, cognitive, and temporal filters. Memory is always the rewriting of a past event, according to new perceptual configurations.
Nonsense as Visual Language
The composition uses written texts that operate according to the principle of nonsense, an approach already present in Ricamando il Caos. The texts, devoid of logical meaning, act as visual signifiers, inviting the viewer to experience the work through sensory scores that highlight connections and interweaving, both spatially and temporally.
Mater-Materia
Dispersed matter reorganises itself into forms that evoke physis/nature as a generative force. Words that express arising, appearing, or coming into the light derive from phos, meaning light. The supernova takes shape as a great cosmic mother, and it is no coincidence that mater shares the same root as “matter”. In this sense, we ourselves are stellar matter, children of an explosion.
“Supernova”, ink drawing
Death and Rebirth
During the explosion, the star releases chemical elements into space, like iron, gold, carbon, magnesium, hydrogen, silicon…, from which new stars, planets, and even forms of life will be born. The supernova is therefore at once death and rebirth, the end of a star and the origin of new stars. It becomes a symbol of regeneration and continuity. Matter implodes and expands, metaphorically transforming into a force of life.
Crab Nebula, one of the most famous supernova remnants. NASA/ESA, Arizona State University.
Wonder and Suspended Time
Like fireworks displays that have astonished audiences for centuries with form, light, and movement, Supernova transforms a cosmic explosion from thousands of years ago into a present, sensory, and poetic experience.
The Supernova project was presented at the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome from 29 June to 29 September 2024, as part of the exhibition La Girandola. The Wonder of Time, in dialogue with the historic Roman pyrotechnic tradition of the Girandola, celebrated since the Renaissance on the occasion of the feast of the patron saints Peter and Paul. From 13 November 2025 to 31 January 2026, the work is exhibited in Athens at Galleria Gramma_Epsilon, in the exhibition Filo-diffusione, curated by Paolo Cortese, which explores the inner and archetypal dimension of the Mater element in dialogue with the collective path of the exhibition, aimed at redefining female identity as creative and propulsive.