Marta Margnetti

Marta Margnetti’s artistic practice seems to draw deeply from a fascination with ancient and traditional craft techniques, and her works reveal a subtle dialogue between the past and the present, highlighting a tension between the natural and the constructed. The use of raw materials from local craftsmanship and the construction industry thus gives her sculptures a sensitivity to the context. The Wisteria Drops series creates a kind of trompe-l’œil between the delicacy of black ceramic drops shaped like wisteria fruits and the potentially deadly danger of these toxic pods. This work, specifically produced for her largest institutional exhibition in the German part of Switzerland, in Sankt Gallen, creates a contrast between fragile beauty and hidden threat, subtly subverting this idyllic impression: the ceramic drops, resembling wisteria fruits placed at the ends of delicate carbon rods, evoke a poetic image of nature, slightly outdated, reminiscent of clusters of wildflowers adorning old ruined walls or flourishing in Ticino’s gardens, but which should not be approached. Thus, Marta Margnetti’s Wisteria Drops embodies a complex exploration of the relationship between humans and nature, the image of history and its reality, beauty and underlying danger, while evoking landscapes and atmospheres imbued with the artistic richness of the Tessin region.