L’albero della Cuccagna. Nutrimenti dell’arte - Alfredo Jaar. Che cento fiori sboccino

Fondazione Merz takes part in the project L’Albero della cuccagna. Nutrimenti dell’arte: an exhibition curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and circulating around Italy. It features a new work by Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar titled Che cento fiori sboccino (Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom).
The installation makes of course reference to Mao’s 1956 campaign which initially encouraged free expression and constructive criticism in order to advance the revolution, but was then suppressed with extraordinary brutality and became such a disaster for culture and intellectual discourse.
Alfredo has worked with this idea before but never in an exterior space nor in the form of this current proposal. Here, he proposes to plant one hundred flowers in two circles which form the infinity sign (∞). By juxtaposing the number of “100″ flowers with the infinity sign, Alfredo reverses Mao’s formula and turns the installation into a call for conscience and for the beauty of nature — a beauty that is exhaustible if we are not capable of taking constructive criticism.

Vai alla guida d'arte di Turin