Universal embrace

This is the fruit of my encounters with a couple and the way in which we got to know each other through their willingness to share their experience with me by retracing their long journey to becoming adoptive parents.

“A special love, perhaps even greater than the love one feels for natural children. A love that exists, regardless, for people who have been neither seen nor met before. A deep bond that comes into being even before meeting them”.

The suffering arising from the knowledge of their inability to procreate is transformed into immeasurable love for someone they still do not know.

“Listening to them and learning of their long and arduous journey, I was urged to represent this couple with a circle to symbolise their union: where Luisa ends, Costantino begins, and so on”.

The strong connection they share has sanctioned their special decision to adopt the two boys. Marcos and Kelen’s faces are granted special status at the centre of the art work, to symbolise the fact that they are always present, forever at the centre of all the choices their parents make. They are surrounded by delicate, airy, one-way embraces.

“Everything has been assembled to follow the same direction, with the exception of just two details, which have been intentionally pointed the opposite way: two non-welded, still movable ring hooks, to reiterate that the embraces must be strengthened and fortified over time”.