Alice Zanin | Candy Eaters 

Alice Zanin designed the site-specific installation Candy Eaters with the intention of transforming the small temple designed by Mario Cucinella for Palazzo Citterio into the pavilion of a large open aviary, as might be seen in an 18th-century Capriccio, imagined in a Milanese garden, in homage to the vocation of the Grande Brera as a place where art and natural sciences persist in communion, in an ideal fusion of knowledge.

Curated by Andrea Dusio

In nature, birds’ plumage is often determined by the color of the food they eat, as is the case with Rosatae Spoonbills. Those unfamiliar with this species may think that the pink coloring of Alice’s birds is artistic “license.” The title of the installation thus plays on the idea that these artifacts have taken on their plumage after ingesting pink candy, when in reality it is Nature that has produced, without artifice or fantasy, the surprising beauty of the Roseate Spoonbills.

In the vision shared by the artist and curator Andrea Dusio, Candy Eaters aims to be a powerful and cheerful evocation of the wonder of biodiversity, conveying the theme of defending nature and the environment, intertwined with that of the circular economy.

In ancient times, birds’ ability to fly was seen as a manifestation of their sacredness. In the ancient Roman practice of divination, the augurs (priests who had the task of interpreting the will of the gods) used their staffs to designate a templum, or portion of the sky, within which they would read the flight of birds to draw auspices (auspicio from avis and specio, I observe birds).

Let us imagine, then, that the Tempietto is, even before being a reference to Bramante and Raphael, an architecture traced following the lines of birds’ flight, an observation point from which we can capture the trajectories they make in the sky, measure their overlap with the orbits of the stars, and feel how nature resonates everywhere with a single music.