AGOSTINO IACURCI

Two motifs recur throughout his work: the palm tree and the cactus, which are also characteristic of Californian as well as Italian vegetation. They were also central motifs in Dry Days – Tropical Nights, one of Iacurci’s most recent installations, which he realized as part of Milan Design Week 2023 in an iconic skyscraper designed by Arrigo Arrighetti in the heart of Milan, soon to be demolished. The exhibition was inspired by predictions that in a few hundred years, climate catastrophe will turn Italy into a tropical landscape with desert areas. The cactus and the palm tree are among the plant species that can withstand such extreme weather conditions. At the same time, for Iacurci, who grew up in Foggia in southern Italy, the palm tree is part of his childhood memories, especially of family trips to the Parco Urbano Karol Wojtyla, a 19th-century park decorated in the style of the period with a magnificent colonnaded portico, pavilions and palm avenues.

As a cultural symbol, the palm tree has always captured the Western imagination. Many believe that the „tree of life“ in the Book of Genesis was actually a palm tree. During the age of exploration and colonization, the palm tree was brought from the tropics to European capitals as a symbol of exoticism and control over distant territories. In the mid-nineteenth century, palm houses in Victorian England and Europe staged miniature jungles for fascinated audiences, representing the ambitions and prestige of wealthy collectors and colonial elites. Soon after, the palm tree conquered seaside resorts from the English Channel to the Mediterranean. 

Artists of the 20th century, from Henri Matisse and David Hockney to Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari, painted and photographed the palm tree. With The Traveling Landscape, Iacurci takes up this artistic tradition but places it in an ambivalent context. In previous projects, he has explored plants and organisms that, in the wake of globalization, are introduced from other regions or climatic zones, multiply unchecked, undergo new metamorphoses and destroy native ecosystems. This also applies to cultivated plants such as the palm tree, which has migrated around the world and has been crossed and bred again and again. Today, it is also a symbol for industrialization, and exploitation. Africa, Asia and even the Amazon are covered in ‘wandering’ palm oil plantations, whose palm species displace indigenous vegetation and destroy social structures.

But Iacurci is not interested in making simple statements. He also shows the palm as a kind of time and space traveler, a resilient organism that can adapt to a variety of environments. With The Traveling Landscape, Iacurci creates a place of beauty and contemplation, a visual reverie for the crisis-ridden Anthropocene.

Indeed, Iacurci goes beyond making simple statements. Through his work, he portrays the palm as a time and space traveler, a resilient organism capable of adapting to diverse environments. With The Traveling Landscape, he crafts a space of beauty and contemplation, a visual reverie amidst the challenges of the Anthropocene era.