“Essere”
Year 2024
Brush and airbrush acrylics and silver leaf on MDF – 75 x 75 cm
The work entered the “Un Quadro X l’Inclusione” competition, placing 4th.
Private collection of the IESA Service.
In this painting, metamorphosis becomes a metaphor for the human journey toward inclusion and full belonging in life. The butterfly, a universal symbol of transformation, becomes a body of light and rebirth. It has just emerged from its chrysalis, fragile and powerful at the same time, and climbs along a blade of grass, a thin bridge between earth and sky. Its human body, genderless, represents being in its deepest essence: beyond all distinctions, beyond all limits. Courage and vulnerability, strength and delicacy, the drive for freedom and the need for a safe haven coexist within it. The green and pink background welcomes this birth like an embrace. Green speaks of balance and direction, of a space in which to grow. Pink evokes the tenderness of affection and the presence of others. The intense blue of its wings reflects the inner dimension of reflection and awareness, while the silver reflections reveal its generosity and spiritual richness. The Morpho Menelaus, with its name meaning “strength of the people,” thus becomes an emblem of collective courage, of a community that supports and accompanies its metamorphoses.
Every being, like the butterfly, needs a protected place to transform—a family, a community, an inner space where it can flourish. This painting is an invitation to recognize ourselves as part of the whole, to feel that inclusion is not just welcoming others, but belonging together to the same Nature.
It is an act of love towards life, reminding us that we are all, ultimately, butterflies journeying towards the light.
