Art Exhibition Raises Awareness of Growing Wildfire Risk, Funds Reforestation

In the after­math of last sum­mer’s wild­fire in Sardinia, artist Michele Ardu cre­ated a series of works of art to raise money for refor­esta­tion and aware­ness of the ever-grow­ing risk of such events.

Under the title ​‘Aurum Urens’ (Latin for ​‘Ardent gold’), 15 pho­tos and 30 sculp­tures were recently dis­played at the Magazzini del Sale in Siena, Tuscany.

“A few months after the blaze, a national news­pa­per called me for a photo reportage on the affected Montiferru area,” Ardu told Olive Oil Times. ​“When I first walked into an olive groves hit by the fire, I felt like I was on a bat­tle­field.”

“Yet in such dev­as­ta­tion and sad­ness, I was struck by the ele­gance and dig­nity that the remains of the trees kept despite the irrepara­ble dam­age,” he added. ​“Then, I real­ized that art could be a pow­er­ful tool to stim­u­late reflec­tion and con­vey a pos­i­tive mes­sage.”

Ardu col­lected burned pieces of olive trees and entire plants, mainly from a 10-hectare grove that was almost entirely destroyed by the flames.

Located in Cuglieri, the plot is adja­cent to the thou­sand-year-old oleaster of Sa Tanca Manna, which, after the dev­as­ta­tion, recently showed signs of life.

“The cul­ture and econ­omy of this area, where I am orig­i­nally from, is strongly linked to olive farm­ing,” said Ardu, who was born in Oristano and lived in London for sev­eral years.

“That orchard has belonged to the same fam­ily for gen­er­a­tions,” he added. ​“The owner told me that it was planted in the mid-1600s. It is clear that the burned olive trees are dam­age within the dam­age, for the trash­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal and his­tor­i­cal her­itage and also for the job loss.”

Using the gold leaf tech­nique, he cov­ered the olive tree frag­ments with a layer of gold. The exhi­bi­tion setup included the golden pieces and instal­la­tions obtained from the charred olive trees.

“I wanted the vis­i­tors of the exhibit to feel the atmos­phere of the destroyed orchards, includ­ing the smell of fire and earth,” said Ardu, spec­i­fy­ing that multi-sen­so­ri­al­ity is a major ele­ment in his works.

“The olive trees and nature, in gen­eral, are so pre­cious,” he said. ​“Everyone can under­stand that gold is valu­able and that the dis­rup­tion caused by fire ends up in life­less coal. I imag­ined that this artis­tic instal­la­tion may announce the key value of nature, con­vey­ing encour­age­ment to over­come the event of death and destruc­tion while doing some­thing good in con­crete terms.”

Ardu syn­the­sizes his vision of art as an expe­ri­ence that should impact the viewer due to its uni­ver­sal lan­guage.

“Wildfires hit many com­mu­ni­ties in sev­eral coun­tries,” he said. ​“They rep­re­sent a grow­ing prob­lem closely related to the cli­mate change issue, but I think there is still no real under­stand­ing of the need for effec­tive pre­ven­tion, yet I believe that every­one can do their part, and this is mine.”

His project is to bring this exhi­bi­tion to other coun­tries, such as Spain and California, which also have suf­fered wild­fire dam­age.

“The idea is to cre­ate ​‘Aurum Urens’ parks around the world to build aware­ness about the impor­tance of pre­ven­tion,” Ardu con­cluded. ​“Part of the pro­ceeds from sales will be used for con­tin­u­ing the project and plant­ing new trees in the areas affected.”