by Anna Cancarini, Year II of the postgraduate course in Contemporary Visual Arts (A.Y. 2021/22)
All my work stems from a need to express my experience, whether it is a traumatic event or a personal one. I am looking for a form that emerges and interacts with space. My lexicon is connected to the need to use mediums like fire, a destructive and regenerative element that has always fascinated me. The themes I address include memory, meaning the collection of all memories, physical body and mortality. The components of ritual and procedure are the basis of every work. Every action is necessary and is part of a path of personal development.
– Anna Cancarini
The concept behind Ascenescence
My project is based on the concept of duality, life and death, black and white, a never-ending cycle in life because grapevine does not die even in winter but it is born again as spring comes.
The title contains the root of the word senescence, that is, the involution in the biological process of aging bearing the structural modifications and the decline in several activities and physiological functions of plants. Asenescence stands for immortality, where life and death coincide.
In this art piece, death is conceptualized as a transition of matter. I chose fire as a medium to represent it, as I do not consider this element merely as a means of destruction but also as the driving force of mutations leading to rebirth and change. Combustion becomes a ritual enabling me to dialogue with life, to purify it and to shape it as I please.
I chose to represent life with white branches made of wax: melting it, heating it and transforming it, giving it a special shape brings me closer to the notion of life as a moment of change and expectation. The natural materials I have chosen will change in time as well: slowly the charred branches will turn to ash and will go back to earth, and the wax branches will change with heat deformeing or melting in the sun.
Work in progress for realizing Asenescence
