LA DOTE DELLA FIGLIA
Installation
Pisa, 2010
FONDAZIONE TESECO PER L’ ARTE
‘Routes/Strade artisti in residenza urbana temporanea’
The work focuses on an old tradition in the Mediterranean that connects the cypress tree with the birth of a girl. The plantation of a cypress tree when a girl was born became her dowry when she became 18. This tradition reveals a connection between the nature of aging and the systems of the society.
In ancient Rome, in Greece and especially in the islands, the birth of a girl was connected to the planting of a cypress tree. The girl and the tree were growing up together. By the time the girl had turned 18, the cypress trunk was in the right height to be valuable as a dowry for the daughter. The trunk was used as a mast for a boat, or for wood.
There is a connection between the natural growing of a girl and a tree, the social issue (the age of marriage), and the economic issue (of the selling of the wood). At the age of 18 the cypress tree has become a valuable dowry for the girl. There is an interesting symbiosis between the girl and the tree.The moment that the tree is cut down, symbolizes the moment that the daughter becomes an adult. The girl becomes a woman. The landscape changes. The cut of the tree and the change of the landscape declare the coming of age. It resembles a ritual of transition from adolescence to adult life.
The installation consists of 12 pictures of girls who were photographed each one next to a cypress tree in the landscape of Tuscany and also of a video showing a woman and a man cutting a trunk of a cypress. The woman, the man, the girl, the cypress tree, all these show different ways of symbiosis.
“Racconta Plinio che gli antichi
romani seminavano cipressi
(Cupressus sempervirens)
quando nasceva una figlia.
Quando la ragazza era pronta
per andare in sposa, i cipressi
erano abbastanza alti per essere
tagliati, sfrondati e venduti
come pali. Cosi nell’antica
Roma i cipressi erano chiamati
“la dote della sposa”.