Rosa Mystica

Chiesa di San Remigio, Italy

Site-specific video installation
Duration: 00:05:00

22.04.06 – 24.02.2023

[...] The statue of an Announcing Angel, companion to the famous Madonna Annunziata of Oratorio dei Bianchi, disappeared from Fosdinovo in 1628. A few years later, in 1676, a new effigy dedicated to the Virgin appeared: Our Lady of the Rosary, from the Church of San Remigio. According to oral tradition, there is an unusual theory according to which the new Immacolata is indeed the angel, not lost but changed. Many clues support this evocative hypothesis.

The video installation Rosa Mystica follows this version and stages an eternal mutation between the sculptural bodies. Placed on an altar in the same church where the original statue is conserved, the work explores the potential of immersive technologies to interact with the sacred and with rituality. The age-old relationship between the people of Fosdinovo and the transcendent dimension is also expressed by performative practices such as the enrobing of statues and processions, and in Rosa Mystica it attains a virtual extension with the intention of speaking to tomorrow’s community. [...]

Produced by Fondazione Elpis 
as part Una Boccata d'Arte 2023
Architectural design in collaboration with Loukis Menelaou