Lumos!

As a child, I was taught that prosperity comes from work. The more you work, the more money you make—if you manage to wrestle it away from whoever owes it to you, which isn’t exactly guaranteed, nor particularly honorable. I can’t imagine a worse idea to carve into one’s descendants, because it creates armies of people who resign themselves to any job, whatever it may be. Just to obtain that infamous “peace of mind,” also known as the “death of the soul.”

With the perspective I have now, I know that prosperity comes only from joy—joy as vibration. A steady, habitual, ecstatic state, not at all hard to reach if you’re willing to decisively renounce fear, its absolute opposite.

Some time ago I started experimenting, very timidly. With great difficulty I took a day off work and spent it doing things that brought me joy. In my case, immersing myself in nature, sea, woods, sky, whatever was calling me. That same day, or the very next, it felt as if a dam had opened and energy had started to flow. Small amounts at first, an unexpected job here and there—just drops. Stubborn as I am, it wasn’t easy, and honestly still isn’t, to let go of what the people who raised you—and then society—drummed into you every way they could.

This state of grace attracts, almost quantum-style, not just financial well-being but everything that belongs to happiness: health, work you love, people who carry the same vibration. A few years ago, for reasons I couldn’t explain, I longed for and imagined that my first exhibition would take place in a building with history—a little decayed, peeling walls. And that’s exactly what happened. I almost couldn’t believe it when they showed me the place: it looked exactly like I had pictured it. Pure magic for me.

I love this subject—the existence of a world I find truer than the one considered “realistic” by consensus. Energy that has a concrete impact on reality. That’s been the true reality for me all along. Entanglement? Who knows.

All this to say that tomorrow at 4:30 p.m., in Perugia, SCD Studio will open ṬILISMĀN – Il potere magico delle parole, a group exhibition where I’ll be showing a piece I titled Troppa grazia Sant’Antonio.

The work I created, as always, explores memory and identity. Just a few generations ago, fertility was deeply desired. No matter how difficult a family’s finances were, children were considered a blessing—essential to a family’s happiness. Children bring light into a home, and here we circle back to what I was saying earlier.

Today, birth rates are essentially at zero (two children per family, if things go really well). The future feels like a threat. Each child represents an investment of about €200,000 before adulthood. Parenthood has become almost inaccessible. My work wants to act as a temporal talisman, a gesture of collective invocation and gentle resistance to the specter of fear that’s pushed on us every possible way.

Some of the tiny talismans you can see in my shop will also be on display (and for sale)—small magical things, little energetic spells. If anyone reading this happens to stop by, I’d truly love to hear what you thought of my work and of the other thirteen extraordinary artists who are showing.