Listen!

Ascolta! It is the first work created at the Accademia di Carrara.
The mask, a 2:1 scale of a human face, is inspired by the famous photograph of the poet Charles Bukowski. The work began as an exercise in studying facial proportions and physiognomy, before evolving into a critical reflection on the marginalisation of the elderly in contemporary society. The sculpture depicts an elderly face caught in the act of shouting, a now feeble cry destined to go unheard, which becomes a metaphor for a widespread condition in which experience and memory are progressively excluded from collective discourse. The work recalls a time when the elderly were recognised as guides of the community, repositories of knowledge built through experience and fundamental to the growth of the social group. In the context of a society characterised by accelerated and uncontrolled evolution, older people often find themselves alienated, unable to recognise themselves in a world they no longer perceive as their own and to which they struggle to adapt. The decision to destroy the mask after firing and rebuild it in a cracked form responds to a specific symbolic intention, conveying an image of fragility and precariousness that alludes to the vulnerability of the elderly. Finally, the work involves the visitor in a process of identification, leading them to recognise that one day