Art in Defence of the Environment

The Beautiful Earth

Seven Artists for Nature

Works for The Beautiful Earth

in Participatory Art

Several Participatory Art works were created for the project The Beautiful Earth, the first being the Green Diary of Virtuous Actions for Mother Earth. It involved writing every day the actions carried out in favour of the environment, in a diary made after art-based awareness meetings in two schools in Potenza. Hundreds of small green notebooks, handmade by the pupils, were filled with their small, meaningful actions, following the example of the green diary previously kept by the Artist.

Peace with the Earth was at the centre of the Great Mandala of the Green Earth.
A symbolic representation of the world, in which our Planet was redrawn by the Artist and the children of the two schools in green and blue, and the continents and oceans were formed through the circular writing of words of light. A promise to the Earth of respect, harmony, care, attention and love, and a commitment for her to become healthy, clean and flourishing again.

The other work, created in participatory art at the S. Maria primary school, was The Sorted Room 1: a large transparent cube – representing a child’s bedroom, complete with furniture – completely filled with the bottles for recycling that the children brought to school every day.

A twin work, The Sorted Room 2, was created in a district of the city, Poggio Tre Galli. The residents themselves, with their children, filled a room at piazzale Sofia 21 with hundreds of plastic bottles.

In both cases the focus was on the attention we must pay to separate collection and to the correct disposal of the materials we use, if we do not want to be completely submerged by them. A happy, hopeful ending: both Sorted Rooms were freed with a public celebration.

All the works were presented in several exhibitions, and various meetings and happenings with the Artist were organised, with projections and maxi projections.

Among the exhibitions was the virtual one, in a 3D gallery, of the 7 Artists for Nature: the works of artists chosen among those most sensitive to environmental issues, who created their Works in favour of the Earth.

The Beautiful Earth

7 Artists for Nature

Favouring alternative ways to the prevailing cynical conformism – in harmony with a lifestyle based on knowledge, love and protection of nature – can be art’s new privileged possibility: an indispensable vision, given the state of Gaia, the Earth.

Today many artists are aware of the great privilege that making art in a nobler form offers, as they can help build new worlds, carrying an experience of thought and life founded on respect for other beings and for the planet.

The Artist of the third millennium cannot but become aware of the responsibility that comes with the charisma he or she possesses; she chooses to be exemplary, to underline the com-union among all beings, activating new qualities in human behaviour too, based on harmony and balance.

The 7 artists and their works:

Vera Benelli, Lombardy: My Green Diary

Mariarosa Marcantonio, Sicily: Let Our Commitment Fly High

Teri Volini, Basilicata/Lombardy: Nature in the Heart

Michele Danzi, Basilicata: La Terre Verte

Tina de Stefano, Basilicata: Mother Earth

Vito Palladino, Basilicata: Green Basilicata

Giusy Villano, Basilicata: Virtuous Actions

For more, visit the page dedicated to the project The Beautiful Earth.