BREATH
Kinetic sculpture | Artist
“The Landscape listens—Shadows—hold their breath.”
Emily Dickinson
Breath is a ten-meter kinetic sculpture standing in Peccioli, a hill town in Tuscany, as part of MACCA, the village's open-air contemporary art collection. Made of satin-finished steel, it carries two movements at once: an outer constellation of fronds that turns continuously with the wind, and a hidden inner flower that opens at dawn and closes at sunset, following the actual rhythm of light rather than a fixed cycle. The work was created in collaboration with illustrator and artist Emiliano Ponzi, known for work spanning illustration, art, and large-scale installation.
The sculpture started as a shared idea, developed together with Emiliano from the very first conversations about what it could be. Image and engineering weren't separate stages here: the concept itself emerged from that overlap, and we shaped it together at every step
Resolving how the two systems of movement could coexist in one structure, without either compromising the other, was central to the design process Emiliano and I worked through together: an outer movement meant to feel unscripted, and an inner one meant to stay almost imperceptible until the moment it reveals itself.
Once the design was set, I stayed closely involved through fabrication and installation, working with the workshop on the engineering details, material behavior, and the practical realities of building something this scale to perform reliably outdoors for years.
The kinetic aspect of Breath is an integral part of the work rather than hidden machinery. It draws on the hypnotic rhythms found in nature itself. I hope anyone who stops in front of it sits down on the grass and loses themselves for a while, the way you do watching clouds drift or flames move in a fireplace, time suspended for as long as they let it.
