Land Art to experience a relationship with nature completely to be redefined and reconstructed
Mya Lurgo is an artist who works with light and nature. She has always been fascinated by land art, but has only begun to devote herself to it with body and soul since she moved to Aranno. A large house with wooden walls and windows reflecting the sky, a work of art herself, provides a roof for Mya, her family and their two dogs, while the forest has become part of her studio. The house is also a residence for artists who create there. Living in the midst of nature, the grandeur of the mountains, and the awareness of a changing landscape have allowed her to welcome visions that in the city dwelt solely on paper. Nature, being immersed in it, manifested itself, showing her creative possibilities.
Mya, together with her husband Omar Antonelli and art historian Alessia Ballabio, started the Aranno Land Art Association.
With the collaboration of international artists, selected through a call for proposals, they created the first art route VITART_PARCOURS 1. The route offers installations and small oases of relaxation where to stop: so-called green points, for example Annidarsi, a nest composed of lianas, bark and a golden log or a book and play house for children or even Cacoon, a suspended tent. "During last year's lockdown, many people experienced a return to nature: they came to the forest specifically to breathe. They would sit there in the middle of the nest and breathe without doing anything else.
We took many things for granted that we now know how to appreciate again," Mya explains. The trail starts at the composting area in Aranno, crosses a portion of the Lurgo-Antonelli family's land, descends to Palazzo, and arrives at the historic core of Aranno, where it connects with the now well-known Trail of Wonders.
Their dream is to create in the entire region an en plein air exhibition that would branch off into 15 trails, suitable to unite Upper, Middle and Lower Malcantone; these could be alternative walking routes and an incentive to leave the car at home from time to time.
The work, when creating in nature with what it offers, is quite a lot, he explains. Before you start creating, there is an important cleaning phase from which you cannot escape. "There was a lot of waste around here, and before you create, you have to reorganize the space, make it receptive. By cleaning outside, you also clean inside, opening up to the vision. "Here, for example, I catch a glimpse of a wing, I'm not sure how I'm going to work on it yet," he says, smiling. He adds that those areas, newly restored and taken to heart, attract respect because, in fact, everyone likes to enter a beautiful place.
Mya organizes art-spiritual classes for adults and classes for children. With them the work is creative and exploratory in nature. "Even with the little ones I always start with cleaning the place where later something will be created. Then you go to find your center: you pause where the breath ends and look at what you see. Children always see something; adults struggle more. Then the magic happens, you don't know how or when, but at some point it happens."
Article by Tina Biasci for eambiente.ch
Land art is a contemporary art movement that developed in the late 1960s in the United States. It is characterized by direct interventions in the landscape with works conceived for specific locations that challenge the conventional means of artistic creation and traditional exhibition spaces.