The installation consists in a group of 18 sculptural elements in the form of vases.
The objects emulate a landscape drawn down in the last century by a medium and artist whose stage name was Hélène Smith. I realized an early trial maquette of these objects during an art residency in Rajasthan, dividing in small modular elements the “Martian architecture” represented by Smith in her drawings.
In a short period after the discovery of “Mars channels” by Giovanni Schiaparelli, in 1877, when the astronomer observed a network of linear structures on the surface of Mars which he called “canali”, various assumptions were made about life on Mars; the wrong translation of the Italian word was popularized, as the "canals" of Mars. A lot of hypotheses, speculations, about the possibility of intelligent life on Mars originated from this mistranslation. Further evidence that liquid water once existed on the surface of Mars comes from the detection of specific minerals such as hematite and goethite both of which sometimes form in the presence of water.The vases realized in clay are covered by thread in order to obtain a surrealistic magenta musk effect that reminds the color of the first packaging in the shape of woman designed by Leonor Fini for Elsa Schiaparelli's perfume "Shocking".
