Lasciar crescere l'erba
by Fulvia Bernacca
portfolio shortlisted call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2023', 2023
Category: Nature, Environment and Perspectives
"Letting the Grass Grow" is the tale of a garden, a place suspended in time, of changes, love, anticipation, and resilience. It narrates the experiences of challenging days, those when my mother was in the hospital. In her absence, the grass in her garden grew, bloomed, and withered.
During her hospitalization, I photographed her garden, observed it with patience, fear, and surprise. I searched for her among the blades of grass, in the fragrance of the flowers, in the roughness of the bark. I rediscovered her in what she had silently nurtured away from the everyday gaze of my eyes. Her garden, in the waiting, became my solace. In a passage from "The Lost Garden" by the philosopher-gardener Jorn de Précy, a character invented by curator/author Marco Martella, my sentiments find a voice:
"The gardener loves winter [...] But winter is melancholic, and perhaps the gardener is questioning. My beautiful garden, will you still be here next spring? Will you truly return?"
"Letting the Grass Grow" has turned into a delicate portrait of the bond between my mother and her garden, and an open reflection on our role as human beings in a system older and more complex than our own. It is also an invitation to let go, to let bloom.
also from Urbanautica Institute Awards 2023