“Jordi NN’s macro-installation is a complex wooden grammar developed after a meeting with wood entrepreneur Luciano Frezza at Frezza Legnami in Bari.
The work recalls the centuries-old olive trees scattered throughout Puglia, sculptures themselves that manifest the primal and multiform beauty of the Puglian landscape. It recalls the ancestral tradition of harvesting olives by hand, reclaiming both the aesthetic factor, the hand, and the deeper ethical message of MANIBUS International Festival of Art and Enterprise. The olive tree and its fruit have always been a symbol of peace for the whole Mediterranean area. Since ancient times, cultivating an olive tree has meant living in peaceful and prosperous times, as the refinement of this practice required the development of processes passed down from generation to generation. Knowledge of manual technique, tempering of constant commitment, respect for the liturgy of time. A time that does not nurture hatred and cannot be disrupted by conflict.
Therefore, the work celebrates Puglia as a land of peace, where knowledge that has become wisdom and dedication that has become love for the land have produced the spirit of initiative and the strength to launch a message of peace that reverberates in the air; an exhortation that reaches the world through the fiery breath of an ancestral pyre. The message is this: let’s venerate our centuries-old olive trees, which have marked the course of our history, and let’s return to cultivating new olive trees that can be the message of a new and longed-for time of peace. From here the title of the work.”
