The constrained silence, the delicate stroke, the subtle modelling and the evolution of an idea define the work of Miranda d’Amico, which mainly pivots around the creative act. Her long career has primarily been in the field of sculpture, and from the outset has stood very close to the minimalist tradition, fusing multiple materials including wax, porcelain and stoneware. Her timber and iron structures are filled with wax with gentle reliefs, clearly in the classical tradition.

In Bomarzo habitat (1997), the artist has produced a small outbuilding with a sloping roof. The use of the clay adds further transience to the notion of the hut. There is a set of steps going up one of the sides, symbolising a progression to learning, the upward path to knowledge and transfiguration. The title alludes to one of the most enigmatic places in the artist’s native Italy, the sacred forest of Bomarzo, also known as the ‘Park of the Monsters’, created by Pirro Ligorio in 1550, which is said to cause visitors to experience a catharsis of the soul. In other words, it is an invitation to inhabit the monster inside us. All of the artist’s oeuvre is a nostalgic reading of the past and draws on the classical tradition and roots, but from a unique poetics. Her sculptures create an unreal space filled with deceptive rooms and stairways leading nowhere, an open space, like metaphors or thought, where the piecemeal speaks of the impossibility of living in a place beyond uncertainty.

Born in 1946, Miranda d’Amico settled in Madrid in 1967, after studying Philosophy & Literature and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Her exhibitions include one featuring her work at the Barjola Museum in Gijón in 1992. Her work was featured in the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, on the recommendation of the curator Vittorio Sgarbi.

Beatriz Espejo