Il tempo dei luoghi is a Maura Banfo’s installation presented at the Aula Magna of the Carrara School of Art in summer 2016, starting from a reflection and another project about the nests. .

The nest is a metaphor of the house, about relationship and care. In this case, Maura made a nest of nearly three meters in diameter, the largest among the fifteen copies she made, one of the first two made from a real nest – like smaller ones already realized – and enlarged thanks to an extension in wood, treated with resin and finished with a kind of varnish, a cold galvanizing.

A work long four months, made about wood collection and research, because Maura need to give three dimensions to her artwork, shown in a second chance at the Davide Paludetto gallery in Turin.

Excerpts from the technical interview to Maura Banfo:

“I come from sculpture, it has always been my favourite part of art, more than painting, I was also Luigi Mainolfi’s assistant for seven years, so the sculpture is an important part of my life, even if I don’t consider myself as a sculptor. My photographs have always been very textural and three-dimensional, but in this case I gave vent to my need for a tangible three-dimensionality through the nests. “

“It is an ongoing project, for instance with the same type of branches, collected in the same woods, I realized a Nest for the second edition of Arte alle Corti in Turin, though it is a gold galvanizing. I don’t exclude that there will be others, I don’t know if I’ll be working again with the wood, it’s all in the making. It is certainly a unique work, each nests is not reproducible. “

“I made the artwork completely on my own, from the wood’s collection to its treatment. In some points the branches are glued to each other, and as I said I treated them with resin, in others they are only laid and galvanizing, the materials that I choose are advise from fellow artists and from my partner, who works the iron. In this sense, there was a kind of cooperation. “

“The only way to clean it is with a compressor, no other way of maintenance is possible. Certainly if Tempo dei luoghi will be exposed in an external space the first problem will be that it matify. Also, branches can be easily damaged, even for the smallest nests is easy to break some tip, and the same for aluminum castings, which are delicate. If few pieces get broken I can fix them, it will change shape but it is part of its being alive.”