May 22nd, 2026 — TERRA MADRE MADRE ACQUA, a new project by Civitella Advisory Council member and 2016 Fellow Michele Ciacciofera opens tonight at the Complesso Museale di San Francesco not far from the Castle, in Montone. Organized in collaboration with Civitella and BUILDING gallery, the exhibition runs through June 10th, 2026.
Born from the encounter between Michele Ciacciofera and Alessia Galassi, TERRA MADRE MADRE ACQUA is an installation centered on two fundamental archetypes of life: water and clay. Two primordial elements, intimately connected, become metaphors for the biological, natural, and human cycle.
The work addresses one of the most dramatic urgencies of our time: the climate and water crisis. Drought, desertification, erosion, flooding, and environmental instability bear witness to the growing suffering of ecosystems and call into question the future of life on the planet.
The installation unfolds as a slow and ritualistic process: suspended from the exhibition space hang natural-fiber sacks containing clay made from sifted local soil. Water, kneaded together with the earth, slowly filters through drop by drop, marking an organic and ancestral rhythm.
Each falling drop becomes a symbol of memory, transformation, and life.
The suspended sacks are bodies in waiting; the bowls are instruments of listening that trace the transformation of matter. The work brings together myth and contemporaneity, spirituality and ecological urgency, memory and future. Observing the falling water and touching the earth as it gradually dries creates a sequence that invites us to recognize the formula from which everything originates.
References to pre-Christian cosmologies evoke the primordial bond between Earth, Water, and Soul.
As clay and water progressively separate, the material takes on bodily forms while the water gathers in ceramic basins arranged in a circular formation throughout the space, transformed into symbolic altars and vessels containing the “memory of the earth.”
In this work, the spiritual dimension intertwines with ecological reflection, transforming a physical process into a political and poetic gesture. MOTHER EARTH MOTHER WATER invites the public to reflect on the fragility of ecosystems and on the need to build a new relationship of mutual responsibility between humanity and nature.
As Nelson Mandela once said: “Without water, there is no future.”