The acacia is a plant with great symbolic value, also mentioned in the Bible as it is connected to Master Hiram’s personal life. According to the legend, the wise sculptor and architect, once killed, was buried under an acacia plant by King Solomon himself, because he believed that this tree had at the same time a gentle and vigorous appearance and that it was a perfect symbol of immortality and purity. This because it did not wither in any season, but on the contrary, it was always renewed. This assumption might be the starting point for Marco Maria Zanin who develops the concept of his new exhibition, entitled Acacia. The ancient plant, whose branches are often improperly sold under the name of mimosa, has characteristics that allow it to spread and resist in various places around the world: beautiful and resilient, with beneficial properties both for humans and for animals, it’s essential to the ecosystem survival, for instance, for bees.
Marco Maria Zanin, “Acacia”, installation view at Museo ‘Gaetano Chierici’ di Paletnologia, ph Alberto Sinigaglia, courtesy Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia
However, the artist chose to name the exhibition not after the plant but after its unborn twin, whom he nicknames Acacia, a provocative name that openly challenges death itself. If the acacia is the plant of regeneration and immortality, Zanin decides that the same must be true for art and craftsmanship, main forms of expression in the exhibition, which can be divided into three different sections. The small first section, dedicated to the artist’s little sister, is composed of printed photos placed in an elegant showcase, depicting the ultrasonography of the twins’ fetuses, while in the mother’s womb, until the survival of a single fetus. The photographs – edited with AI tools – clearly show the evolution that determines the growth of one individual to the detriment of the other, in a war for survival that begins from the safest place: the mother’s body. This first section can be traced back to human biology, to the struggle for survival and acts almost as a memento mori in its being placed – wisely – next to a showcase where several human skulls are displayed, as if to symbolize the continuation with the ultrasound prints.
Marco Maria Zanin, “Tuorlo snc, Segni ancora da pronunciare III”, ph Alberto Sinigaglia, courtesy Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia
To the right of the wall with the prints, on the other hand, one can identify a showcase containing an artistically elaborate glass object, isolated on a pedestal and barely visible due to the lighting of the prints on the left, whose shape and transparency suggest a reference to the condition of pregnancy: a dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between the exhibition of a fragile body and a safe and hidden shelter. The object is part of the second section of the exhibition which, concerning more specifically artistic craftsmanship, brings together works created by artisans who come from different specializations, selected together with the Cologni Foundation for the Arts and Crafts. The first area, as mentioned above, concerns Simone Crestani’s artistic glass, to which are added the artistic weaving made by Giuditta Brozzetti, Antonino Negri’s ceramics and finally the metals by Tuorlo snc (Maria Vittoria Garbin and Nicola Sturm). The peculiarity of this section lays – unlike the chapter dedicated to printed plates – in the fact that it is not distinguishable at first glance. The artifacts, although visibly displayed in elegant and well-lit showcases, are concealed among the ancient findings of the archaeological museum permanent exhibition. In the showcases you can thus admire objects of rare beauty dating back to different eras and belonging to different civilizations, which thus testify not only to the high creativity and skill of our predecessors, but also to the distinctiveness and resistance of the single material.
Marco Maria Zanin, “Acacia”, installation view at Museo ‘Gaetano Chierici’ di Paletnologia, ph Alberto Sinigaglia, courtesy Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia
The arrangement is not fortuitous, therefore, and the originating exhibition narrative follows a triple common thread: first of all, the artist wants to pay homage to the long tradition linked to manual knowledge that is – or so it is thought– being gradually lost, due to the increasingly frequent use of new digital technologies and 3D printers. A knowledge that is generative and strongly connected to the ability to give life, birth and rebirth (whether it is a body, or a plant, or the shape of a material). Secondly, the boundary between the invisibility and the visibility of the object is abolished: the artifacts are displayed but they’re not easily recognizable because they are placed together with the archaeological finds, in such a way as to suggest an acceptance of the millenary cultural heritage and the challenge that it presents to us. Lastly, there is a permanent reference to death, resulted both by the content of the slabs, by the skulls on display and by the fact that the ancient objects preserved in the museum are part of a large and fascinating collection of grave goods. All objects were originally created to decorate burials and to wait on the deceased necessities in the afterlife. In this way the little Acacia, the lamented unborn, obtains her majestic funeral: the slabs that depict her symbolically become a body, the artifacts become her trousseau, the museum her tomb and the visitors embody the people who love her, the family, who come to express their condolences in magnificent silence. The funeral thus becomes art, which is a vitalistic celebration.
Marco Maria Zanin, “Acacia”, installation view at Museo ‘Gaetano Chierici’ di Paletnologia, ph Alberto Sinigaglia, courtesy Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia
In conclusion, visitors can enjoy a documentary projected in another room, where the audience listens to the artist talk which aims to explain the genesis of the exhibition. The explanation is alternated with interviews and filming featuring the artisans at work, while sculpting, weaving and modeling Acacia’s grave goods: men and women, some young talents and others heirs to a rich family history, which allows them to pass on from generation to another a knowledge that is too often belittled, considered popular and simply technical. With this exhibition, however, it has been possible to give artistic value, to these crafts. Such products could be real identikits of our civilization in many centuries afterwards, both in the real and in the virtual dimension. The project, created by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia – Civic Museums, is supported by PAC2024 – Plan for Contemporary Art promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. The graphic design of the exhibition and catalog is by Giulia Boccarossa.
Giulia Gorella
Info:
Marco Maria Zanin. Acacia
Curated by: Irene Biolchini, Alessandro Gazzotti and Giada Pellegrini
28/03/2025 – 27/07/2025
Gaetano Chierici Museum of Palaethnology | Palazzo dei musei
via Lazzaro Spallanzani 1, Reggio Emilia
Admission: free
www.musei.re.it
Giulia believes in curiosity as a sign of joy in life, in empathy as the supreme form of love and in art as the sublimation of the doubts and anxieties of the human soul. She loves underground and anarchic countercultures and art with macabre content. Passionate above all about literature, theater and music, she is still searching but is aware that to find one’s place in the world, it is first necessary to dig one’s own grave.
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