Imperia, May 2026

Listening to the echo of the cracks, stories cried out of crevices, out of wounded walls and chipped paint; it’s from these spaces, from the palazzo’s mysteries — that my desire to break from challenging prickly times (the past) manifested. The palazzo has generously opened a room for me to engage, for a powdery moment, with a sensation: the essence of rebirth — between ashes and earth.

Like a poem, Tra Cenere e Terra (Between Ashes and Earth, articulates through five (plus a cupboard) stanzas, metaphorically and physically so, of the palazzo (Canneto/Prelà )

I like to thank Christine Laprell for her loving friendship, Cornelia Regelsberger for her unconditional help, Eugenio Lavagna for his dedicated housekeeping and Frank Schurack for granting access to this unique and special place. Thank you to the organiser Gert Heller and to all the supporters of Sentieri dell’Arte 2026, what a precious magical cultural event!

Between ashes and earth

What lies in-between?
Perhaps a sublime — unconditioned beauty — intangibile, uncanny, unheimlich
immensely so an invisible place

Maybe it’s under the dust of the everyday
that I will find my truth
between pain and joy
my uncanny
between pots and plants
the unheimlichkeit
in my hands
the musty soil
soft like the grey
of burned wood
bones-becoming-earth
rise into plants
leaves
are my wings
cactuses
my motif, my meaning
my evolutionary sting
subtle a force
strange, extraordinary, odd, eery, queer
not unnatural
supernatural
what a feeling!
Trembling
fear
sifted to powder
rises
gently swaying
before
settling
like a film
dust over the mundane
particles breathe the atmosphere
pollen clouds
the uncanny is in the air, in plants and in me
as I make love to a leaf
dirt filling the cracks and crevices of my desire
earth’s my body
ancestral ashes
are my soul
a rainbow — evaporating the dust
moist it enters
(in) the fissure
I let
that cannot be held
go
between ashes and earth

Claudi Piripippi