A 700kg whale washed up in the heart of Fiumicino airport
Passengers on the Leonardo da Vinci will be able to admire, in the square of boarding area A, which was inaugurated in the presence of President Mattarella on [...]
FCO
Passengers on the Leonardo da Vinci will be able to admire, in the square of boarding area A, Inaugurated in the presence of President Mattarella last May, the work - never before exhibited to the public - by artist Marcantonio called "Great Soul" presented in a ceremony attended by, among others, Aeroporti di Roma CEO Marco Troncone, Enac President Pierluigi Di Palma and Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano.
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The initiative is supported by One Ocean Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that works internationally with institutions, companies and individuals to protect the oceans; ASviS, Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development, Italy's largest civil society network, committed to promoting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda and Cultura Italiae, the association whose main purpose is to disseminate and promote projects, concrete actions and best practices aimed at supporting the world of culture in order to stimulate, through it, the growth and ethical, social and economic development of individuals and communities as a whole, improving relations between peoples. Culture Italiae, among other things, also oversaw the selection of the work for the criteria of sustainability and awareness of environmental issues.
It is a work of contemporary art, which has a strong visual impact and which reproduces in original size for a length of twelve meters and a total weight of over seven hundred kilograms, the skeleton of a whale, lit inside it by lamps from all over the world. The lights that illuminate the massive installation constitute its still-burning soul, at the same time representing our society: if the animal lives, it also depends on us. It is an invitation to reflect on how nature is in our hands and depends on our care, reminding us how the beauty of the world is fragile and closely related to human behaviors.
With the installation of "Great Soul," Aeroporti di Roma once again confirms its commitment to raising public awareness of environmental issues such as saving water and recovering plastic, the leading cause of pollution of the seas, this time through culture.
Attention to the environment has led Leonardo da Vinci, one of the few airports in the world, to equip itself with a dual network that allows drinking water to be used only for strictly necessary uses and industrial water for all other needs. Thanks to these systems, more than 66% of the water used at the airport is non-potable water and the potable water savings is more than 1 million cu m/year, corresponding to nearly 500 Olympic-size pools. On the issue of waste, ADR has also always been at the forefront, promoting a circular economy based on reducing the use of single-use plastics and increasing separation and recycling by involving all airport operators.
With this work we continue, As Europe's best airport for quality for the past 5 years, in our journey to build the airport of the future: not only a bridge to the world, but a place for reflection, contamination and growth, including cultural growth.
It is precisely this vision that has long since led us toward defining Leonardo da Vinci as The Careport, a word that integrates the concept of care at the heart of the airport: we want to welcome our passengers into a sustainable, caring, and genuinely inclusive world," commented ADR's CEO, Marco Troncone.
"I am excited to present for the first time ever this work of mine in such a unique context as an airport. Great Soul invites us to reflect on the condition of our oceans and even more deeply on life and death, on the potential of care, attention and the consequences of the individualism that generates our lifestyle. But strong is the dreamlike component, the dream and fairy tale that this vision elicits. I want to create beauty, not denunciation, dream and not rhetoric. In this indefinite and bittersweet game between dramatic representation and magical vision the whale lives, flies alight with lights that belong to our world, our society: the lights are us. Thus is born an endless game of cause and effect, of blame and merit, in which we are the advocates of the fate of nature, and thus of ourselves," explained the author of Great Soul, Marcantonio.
