Riarborescences are the botanical signals that by restarting from plants and soil – and thus from a biunivocal relationship with them – can accompany the regeneration and repair of soils: and this is why Luigi Coppola reminds us, “If we do not trust the earth under our feet, what can we trust?”

Riarborescenze, brings together two paths of artistic research and production, Ex Situ and Vinculum, in the exhibition spaces of Palazzo Baronale De Gualtieriis home of KORA and the streets of Castrignano dei Greci from July 15 to Nov. 19.

The exhibition is the artist’s first solo show, which connects the two paths developed in parallel in two distant geographical and socio-political contexts: Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the lands of Salento, ideally connected by a history of land exploitation and degradation and the need to intervene through collective restorative actions starting with a renewed sensitivity and alliance with plants and the forces of nature.

Vinculum, is an original work designed for the public space of the village of Castrignano Dei Greci.
After years of experimentation and research in the Salento olive groves affected by xylella fastidiosa, the artist tries to make visible the generative forces still present in the fields of olive trees, in most cases given up for dead, and build a new bond (Vinculum), with the earth, in which human beings, take responsibility for the wicked choices with respect to the expansion of monoculture, the impoverishment of the soil, the rejection of peasant life and the care of their ecosystems. Through a radical rethinking of our being and acting, we can think of ourselves as agents in the cycles of matter, and accompany the natural processes of agroforestry of the land to build a multiple landscape.

Nature has the power to re-emerge and transform, and the vinchi (the suckers, branches that rise near the trunks of olive trees that are diseased and abandoned to themselves, hence the title of the work VInculum), are the sign of these regenerative possibilities. Luigi Coppola sees in the plots of land, for the most part now abandoned, a possibility of resurgence starting with nature and its ways of reconstruction. A regenerative process in which the artist proposes agroforests or gardens cultivated by indulging the relationality between ecosystems of different plants, natural agriculture, which makes the soils strong, fertile, able to protect themselves and support the botanical diversity that coexist. Vinculum imagines coexistence with epidemic, with disease, as a possibility: no need to uproot, burn, capitozzare olive trees, but to use the generative force of organic matter accumulated over hundreds of years by these extraordinary plants.

Vinculum’s works, specially made paintings and drawings on canvas, are presented in the streets of Castrignano, inserting themselves as new icons within the votive, empty aedicules of Palazzo De Gualtieris and the entire town, in a path that aims to make plants, restorative gestures, soils, and roots iconic. A free press produced by the artist is an integral part of the work, a gesture of radical pedagogy that aims not only to deepen the imagery suggested by the artist, but also to share a sensitive reflection and methodology to think the crisis as an opportunity.

Ex-Situ, transports to Puglia an articulated work in progress that the artist conceived and developed in the Democratic Republic of Congo involving artists, writers, cultural actors and scientists gathered around Ateliers Picha. Launched in 2021 through a series of workshops aimed at studying the intertwining of colonial urban history and land pollution, Ex-Situ unfolded as a scientific and poetic investigation that resulted in the desire to imagine a possible long-term project of reparation – of a land damaged by mining and a society raped by colonial and post-colonial history. Presented during the “7th Lubumbashi Biennial – Toxicity,” the project involved the distribution of a free press in the city and the installation of twelve tapestries in the monumental atrium of the Lubumbashi Institute of Fine Arts. The twelve tapestries illustrate twelve plants, symbolically chosen as a possible means of “repairing” the land (thanks to phytoremediation properties) and a society impoverished by Western modernism and the break between man and nature imposed by coloniality.

Flanking the tapestries are some copies of the free-press produced and distributed in Lubumbashi on the occasion of the Biennial, and the volume EX SITU Compatible avec la vie. Plantes pour un monde qui attends de germiner, recently published by Kunstverein (Milan), which collects in a series of texts, the research and reflection work carried out over two years by the artist together with an international network of people who contributed to the project. The book is designed as a tool, an invitation to become allies, to question the complexities and opportunities of the crisis.

Vinculum and Ex-Situ are at the heart of this first solo exhibition by Luigi Coppola at Kora, which aims to highlight the close relationship between artistic planning, long-term relationship with territories and the self-healing potential of lands. Both projects are in fact centered on restorative gestures, starting from the crises of two territories and their histories, which are different but parallel. This is not a descriptive approach, but the sharing of an imaginary and the possibility of activation through a series of concrete actions, the “getting our hands on it,” starting from what is considered sterile (even if it is not) to generate new life, new economies, new ecosystem relationships.