Renata De Bonis

'A Stone inside a seed' sculpturally juxtaposes pens, pencils, and a laptop previously utilized by the curator of the project, Domenico De Chirico in his practice as a curator and editor with avocados seeds scattered on the floor of the Vestibolo room on Palazzo Saluzzo. The provenience of such objects indicates the potential of validation that is present in the act of writing, editing, programming, and narrating, pointing towards the context of DAMA and the specificity of curation, but also amplifying the scope of such action towards other realms, finally tracing it back to the fabrication of history through writing from a “central” point. The avocado seed is natural-sculptural potentiality in itself, the potentiality of all in the most traditional sense: it is form, it is shape, and it is volume… it is future projection. The avocados themselves make reference to the fact that the Spanish Conquistadors utilized avocado seeds (popularly known as stones) to produce a blood-red liquid used as ink in official colonial documents (documents that still preserve their information after centuries).

Finally, the work 'A Stone Inside A Seed'' is a sculptural contemplation on the power behind written language, a poetic critique upon the validation process present in the act and gestures of writing and signing, be it through legal documents or academic essays, by means of contracts or scientific papers, or even so by way of fictional novels, poetry, or curatorial texts.