L'agopuntura per il pianeta di Fabio Pietrantonio

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Acupuncture for the planet by Fabio Pietrantonio
Curated by Maria Livia Brunelli
Strange how eating a piece of melon can lead to a gift
from the universe.
This is what happened to Turin-born artist Fabio
Pietrantonio, inspired this Summer by a bamboo
toothpick stuck in a piece of melon in a bar. He listened
to the message and created a work which subsequently
became a performance.
Arranging a series of bamboo sticks first of all on a canvas
and then in the earth. An earth rich in ancient energy,
that of Sardinia, the land of Nuraghi. Pietrantonio’s
performance was held at the Giants’ Tomb of Coddu
Vecchju, a site in Gallura known world-wide as a point of
convergence of positive, therapeutic energies.
The Giants’ Tomb is one of many funerary monuments
found in Sardinia, built in the Nuragic era as collective
burial grounds to house the bones of the dead. Legend
has it that the collections of bones found inside were the
remains of a giant’s banquets. The long burial chambers
are delimited to the front by a sort of semi-circle as if to
symbolise the horns of a bull. The tall stele placed at the
centre of the semi-circle has a doorway cut through it
for access to the tomb. It was thought that the bull and
mother earth mated to give new life to the dead in the
after-world.
The members of the tribe gathered before the Coddu
Vecchju stele to pay homage to the dead of the
community. One morning, more than four thousands
years later, just after the break of dawn, Pietrantonio
stuck thousands of sticks in the ground in front of this
stele, similarly to a symbolic, powerful form of earth
acupuncture.
‘Bamboo is, I think, the plant that produces more
oxygen than any other – explains Pietrantonio -, in fact
bamboo groves have always been the preferred place
of meditation of Buddhist masters. I have no idea why
things happen or how, but the message was clear.
Earth acupuncture consists in exerting pressure on the
ground with a bamboo needle to create a positive contact,
thereby generating symbolic benefits for the earth,
allowing this to breath and healing the earth similarly
to a sick patient. Our planet is in great need of care,
and positive thought influences all its energies, making
things flow smoothly. This simple action unleashes a
myriad of energies, opening the transmission channels
in the earth. It is so banal that it seems impossible but it
happened, starting to pour with rain when I inserted the
fourth stick and stopping only when I ran out of sticks’.
It is well known that the earth’s crust is crisscrossed
by a network of telluric energies and magnetic forces
that make the Earth an authentic “living organism”.
Man, as a child of Mother Earth, can interact with
these ‘movements’, unconsciously absorbing these.
These energies are more intense in certain places than
in others and, according to many studies, ancient
sacred sites were constructed along these energy lines.
Therefore, the Giants’ Tomb acts as an accumulator of
these energies.
According to the artist, the place where the performance
was held is ‘a gate, a line of energy transmission’. ‘I
immediately perceived that it was an energy pathway –
states Pietrantonio -, as while I was placing the sticks in
the ground, memories of when I lived with the aborigines
in Australia sprang to mind’.
After growing up on a typical piedmontese farm amongst
cows and rows of Barolo vines, Pietrantonio lived for
short periods in Sardinia, New York and Milan. He then
moved to Northern Australia to share the lifestyle, tents
and spirituality of the Aborigines from whom he learnt to
paint as if looking from above, from a zenital viewpoint.
This inspired his works constructed with nails, similarly
to trees seen from the moon; a short of ‘planetary
graphics’. Spurred by his need to live in close contact
with nature, he spent various months with the American
Indians at Santa Fé: here, immersed in the forces of
the earth, his art acquired a new minimalist sensitivity
reflecting cosmic harmony.