Silvia’s research actually began a long time ago: she first started with cork, then she moved to the story of the Vaia storm and the Acqua Granda flood in Venice, to finally reach the urgent issue of the spruce bark beetle in the Dolomites. And we are certain that even here her prismatic gaze will be temporary, since one day she will approach another urgency. This is because, from that sphere of art that feeds on the complexity of the terrestrial world between Art and Environment, Silvia’s vital work, with its consistently measured idealistic vision, focuses on the complexity of worlds in constant transformation. With her technique and poetics, she modifies the way of interceding and becomes independent from them.

Over time, her artworks became larger, more imposing, more physical. Above all, they reached a level of strength and determination that restores them to a state that cannot be devoid of fascination and beauty, yet a raw and determined level. These elements are not disconnected from the compositional skills of their creator, a person who is always wonderfully balanced between hypotheses of greatness and hypotheses of failure. Failure understood as progressive evolution, the one that believes in the expansion of the error as a means of growth in a world that makes no concessions and admits no retorts. Today, Silvia masterfully governs the ability to systematise an artwork that does not disregard the context, considered as a texture that incorporates a quantity of signs that, together, become an organism (3.).

Silvia’s work is a hortus conclusus of an archaeological site in which to map, document, highlight, preserve and restore.

The exhibition L’amore finisce dove finisce l’erba. Dopo Vaia, il bostrico tipografo captured the attention of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa di Venezia. The Sala del Camino is located on Giudecca Island and it is one of the prestigious venues of the Foundation. It is a large rectangular space defined by a series of windows on both long sides. The grand fireplace at the back is an iconic feature that gives the venue its name.

Visitors are invited to step inside, attracted by a series of displays showing two videos on loop. Viaggio tra i boschi che cambiano (Journey through changing woods), produced by L’AltraMontagna documents the journey undertaken by Pietro Lacasella and Luigi Torreggiani through the most affected areas of the Vaia storm. The disaster that together with rising temperatures fuelled the epidemic and caused the proliferation of the spruce bark beetle. The documentary addresses, step by step, some of the main reflections that these two phenomena bring to light. In particular, the authors focus on the relationship that humans establish with ecosystems in this time of climate crisis. Emergenza Bostrico: sostieni la ricerca per salvare i boschi (Bark beetle emergency: support research to save the forests) is a video produced by the University of Padua to support two doctoral scholarships, the first of which was funded and started on the 1st of November. Featuring interviews with professors Emanuele Lingua, Massimo Faccoli and their researchers, the document describes some key points of the bark beetle research project. The project was conducted by the Departments of Territorio e Sistemi Agro-forestali (TESAF) (Land and Agro-Forestry Systems) and Agronomia, Animali, Alimenti, Risorse Naturali e Ambiente (DAFNAE) (Agronomy, Animals, Food, Natural Resources and Environment) within the University of Padua.

On the right side, a space enclosed by counter-walls displays large-format black and white photographs affixed to the surfaces. The images illustrate the process behind the work, the stages of collection and processing, the artist chiselling and constructing, scenes of Dolomite slopes and workshops where the components of the artwork undergo transformation and restoration.

The fireplace at the end of the room frames a table with two chairs. Visitors are invited to sit down, leaf through the book on the table and listen to the author reciting passages from the same book through headphones. The book is Sottocorteccia, written by Pietro Lacasella and Luigi Torreggiani under the scientific supervision of Prof. Massimo Faccoli and published by People in collaboration with L’AltraMontagna. Sottocorteccia merges and balances between non-fiction and travelogue. Its authors tackle the problem of bark beetles from a forestry and anthropological perspective, investigating the complex relationship between humans, trees and insects.

At the centre of the room is a forest, or something that resembles one. The disconnected floor consists of cork parallelepipeds of different heights. Above them, Silvia Canton’s paintings/sculptures appear totemic, lyrical and investigative, echoing the essence of the project. This principle of evocation operates through the display of powerful and beautiful artworks on which the action of the bark beetle is evident and complex in its rawness, leaving space for other embellishments orchestrated by the artist’s hand and by multiple materials, among which the presence of gold is the distinctive element.

The installation cannot be accessed, only contemplated. Walking around it stimulates the sight and senses, however the temptation to touch must be resisted.

Speaking of the book that triggered Silvia’s entire research process on the bark beetle epidemic, Sottocorteccia, after years of working on the environment with cork as her favourite iconic material, reading this book moved her poetics from its foundations. “It was autumn 2023, and while Luigi and Pietro had started writing their book, I was experimenting artistically with the barks attacked by the bark beetle”, Silvia states and continues “……from the beginning of my artistic investigation, Luigi has been my point of reference to answer curiosities, doubts or information on the subject. And precisely because we were developing two parallel studies on the same theme, I thought it would be interesting to connect our two points of view, between Art and Science”

Sottocorteccia was published in the spring of 2024, while Silvia’s determination saw her walking among expanses of fallen trees, finding the material, taking it to the laboratories responsible for sterilisation and cleaning, and finally working on it in her studio.

Her work acts as a vehicle and messenger of relationships and it composes the emblem of a possible truce. While in nature the bark beetle became destructive, in her artworks it turns into something else: with the gentle but determined thought of Art, a possible direction in a collapsing world is a real hope. The bark beetle chisels, embroiders, digs, demolishes but enriches, if the point of view is aestheticising, if Art takes possession of it with the sole aim of conveying an urgency, raising the level of attention, catalysing gazes and voices directed in unison towards environmental and social issues. In its choral expression, between individual artworks and the complex of installed artworks in dialogue with the Venetian space, the exhibition constructs an iconic circular perimeter that heralds change and hope. The latter sentiment does not seek to remove or erase reality but rather to establish a dialectical dimension open to a path of consciousness through the prosthesis of art.

Silvia’s artistic practice, rich in linguistic sedimentation and intercession, analyses, not without fear and reticence, the protocols that stitch together the natural and artificial worlds, moving with flexibility, understanding and inclusion. The translation that the artist sets in motion through materials, techniques and related colours is a necessary concept for designing in a state of emergency, for translating – not only from one language to another, but also for transporting a concept from one end to the other – and during this journey, establishing tremors and identifying interstices.