In the Colosseum Archaeological Park, a bronze ring more than four meters in diameter. It is the site-specific work of Francesco Arena

Inaugurated today at the Vigna Barberini on the Palatine Hill in Rome is Francesco Arena ’s site-specific work entitled Anello, a project promoted by the Colosseum Archaeological Park and winner of the fifth edition of the Italian Council call conceived by MiBACT’s Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity.

It is a bronze ring four and a half meters in diameter, inside of which is a quote from Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse: The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

It is a work “designed specifically for that space in relation to what will surround it,” according to the artist himself. "A work that relates human time to stone time. At the Archaeological Park, stone takes center stage, with the artifacts that have been there for thousands of years. They have endured for so long. But stone they were originally and eventually time is turning them back into natural stone. They get destroyed and go back to what they were before," he added.

In Virginia Woolf’s sentence is “summarized our relationship to the things around us that have existed before us and will survive us, the layering of time and the multitude of existing times, human time equal to a handful of decades and stone time made up of eras; in the sentence,” Arena continued, “is clear to me the relationship we have with inanimate things that we use on a daily basis, precisely a stone we kick, seemingly an object of no importance but one that testifies by its endurance over time to nature’s indifference to our passing, even when this transforms a stone into a statue or architecture inevitably destined in time to become ruin and stone again.”

Now the work is meant to remain on display for at least a year, but the artist hopes it can become a permanent site-specific work.

Ph.Credit Ansa

In the Colosseum Archaeological Park, a bronze ring more than four meters in diameter. It is the site-specific work of Francesco Arena

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