An Art Exhibition Among the Olive Trees in Umbria

Activities besides farm­ing are increas­ingly tak­ing place in Italy’s olive groves.

The grow­ing need for open-air set­tings in the wake of the Covid-19 pan­demic favors the use of places that pro­vide a peace­ful and healthy envi­ron­ment.

These fac­tors prompted an Australian visual artist, Virginia Ryan, to host an exhi­bi­tion at her prop­erty in Trevi, Umbria.

“Before we came here, we lived in sev­eral coun­tries around the world, and my art has influ­ences from all the dif­fer­ent places where I stayed,” Ryan told Olive Oil Times.

“Among oth­ers, I have worked closely with anthro­pol­o­gists, and I have a strong ten­dency to cre­ate a rela­tion­ship with the place where I am,” added the artist, whose work includes draw­ing, paint­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy and instal­la­tions.

In 2016, she moved to the Umbrian town in the province of Perugia with her hus­band and set­tled in an estate that com­prises an olive grove and housed an oil mill until the 1950s.

Due to its par­tic­u­lar urban struc­ture, the olive trees are located right in the his­toric cen­ter of Trevi, over­look­ing the val­ley below.

“Last year, in the after­math of the Covid-19 restric­tion mea­sures that we all have expe­ri­enced, I started work­ing in the orchard,” she said. ​“I have a great affin­ity for all my plants.”

When it came time for Ryan to do some main­te­nance among the groves, she decided to revive them.

“After the lock­down, [the orchard] acquired a new mean­ing,” she said.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trebisonda and Freemocco asso­ci­a­tions, Ryan brought together as many as 47 artists for a one-day event held on the sum­mer sol­stice. The art­works, mostly instal­la­tions, were dis­played among the olive trees.

“I really liked the idea of the sol­stice enchant­ment and also the fact of work­ing for a very elu­sive moment,” she said. ​“We had already orga­nized a first one-night event in a part of the gar­den, with about 30 artists, in 2015.”

“Then, towards the end of last year, we started think­ing about a new event,” Ryan added. ​“We hoped that for the begin­ning of the sum­mer, with the relax­ation of social dis­tanc­ing mea­sures, we could be phys­i­cally close again. Eventually, it was pos­si­ble, and we planned the exhi­bi­tion called ​‘Actualizing Tendencies.’”

Developed in the 1960s by the American psy­chol­o­gist Carl Rogers, the actu­al­iz­ing ten­dency is a con­cept that refers to an active push for the organ­ism to improve itself via bet­ter orga­ni­za­tion, ful­fill­ment of its poten­tial and growth.

“Rogers used the exam­ple of a potato plant that he saw grow­ing in a cel­lar in Dublin,” Ryan said. ​“The lit­tle sprout climbed up the wall towards a fee­ble ray of light. I thought the idea of a vital drive within every liv­ing organ­ism is a very pos­i­tive and affir­ma­tive con­cept at a time when we have to move towards light, open­ness and growth again.”

In the weeks before the exhi­bi­tion, the artists were invited to visit the site and see the spaces that would have hosted their works, almost all of which were instal­la­tions.

“The set­ting-up in the olive grove was ideal,” said the artis­tic cura­tor Davide Silvioli, who, along with Mara Predicatori, wrote the texts for the exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log.

“Perched on ter­races, the orchard allowed the vis­i­tors to fol­low a path, between the plants and the cor­re­spond­ing works, which unrav­eled through the ele­ments of the site, namely the olive trees, the earth and the medieval wall around the grove,” Silvioli said.

“Following the claim of the exhi­bi­tion, that is the vital impe­tus of nature that affirms itself beyond con­tin­gen­cies, the artists were prompted to cre­ate works that con­vey this con­cept, a dimen­sion that all of us as indi­vid­u­als have recently expe­ri­enced,” he added.

“The event also had the aim of recon­nect­ing an artis­tic net­work that had become some­what frayed after all that hap­pened,” Silvioli con­tin­ued. ​“It lasted one day for the sym­bolic sig­nif­i­cance of the sol­stice as a cli­matic, mete­o­ro­log­i­cal, uni­ver­sal pas­sage, and the artists were required to phys­i­cally attend it to rein­force this sym­bol­ism and effec­tively trans­mit the vital impe­tus through art.”

Some works have been located at the base of the olive trees; other instal­la­tions have gen­tly been leaned on the branches – the works of art were always devised in rela­tion to the plants.

In the shadow of an olive tree, the Tuscan artist Samantha Passaniti con­ceived and set up the instal­la­tion ​‘Uncertain Floor,’ an uneven pave­ment made of loose tiles, which are actu­ally wooden boards coated with white pig­ment from the fam­ily car­pen­try busi­ness and placed on the ground. The stalk of a suc­cu­lent plant springs from a gap at its core.

“I wanted to trans­mit the idea of walk­ing on the rub­ble of a blown floor,” she said. ​“The sense of uncer­tainty that we all went through in the last period char­ac­ter­ized by the pan­demic was dis­rup­tive, yet for many of us was cru­cial to find new sta­bil­ity, a renewed sense of hope.”

“One slow step after another, I fol­low the oscil­la­tion that the wob­bly sup­port sug­gests until I feel sta­bil­ity, and I finally can take another step for­ward,” Passaniti added. ​“Uncertainty, inse­cu­rity, patience, lis­ten­ing and trust are essen­tial ele­ments with­out which there is no move­ment.“

“In this com­pli­cated dance towards some­thing desired and per­haps only imag­ined, a green sprout rises between the cracks of this demol­ished soil to sig­nify that what we were look­ing for was here already,” she con­tin­ued.

The mayor of Trevi, Bernardino Sperandio, was present at the event, which was attended by local peo­ple, art con­nois­seurs and enthu­si­asts, col­lec­tors and artists.

“This event is not intended to be annual, but occa­sional,” Ryan said. ​“At this time, it was also a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the land that has nour­ished and sup­ported us in this dif­fi­cult time.”

“We have put together body, spirit, appre­ci­a­tion, strug­gle, and I was so moved by every­one’s gen­eros­ity that allowed us to arrange every­thing with great har­mony,” she con­cluded. ​“It was an event of art, com­mu­nity, nature and beauty.”