The 15th edition of the Cactus Festival is being held in the year that will be remembered in history for the raging of the new Coronavirus 19, the pandemic that has affected the lives of billions of people across the planet and left its mark on our event as well.
Lots of changes, such as the requirement to measure body temperature and release of one’s personal details that many had already experienced elsewhere, along with the novelty of the new venue where we held the event, the large greenhouse of the Memorial Museum of Liberty and which, it is likely, will remain the place to be for future editions.
A highly desired event, after months of quarantine that forced nurseries to close and enthusiasts to online shopping, with no more opportunity for human contact.
Fifteen is the number of years since the first edition was held here. We have discovered that the Kabbalistic meaning of this number is that of theunion of people in one’s family and community. The energy of this issue is expressed in the perpetual exchange of give-and-take in both emotional and social life. In number fifteen, ideas are born that lead to the improvement of world welfare.
In short, this Cactus Festival was meant to bring people together again, albeit with due precautions, to escape the isolation generated by fear.
We believe we have achieved our goal.
Copiapoa
Born as a joke, the initiative to present the Copiapoa genus in all its beauty was perhaps the most challenging part of organizing the event. Thanks to the willingness of our Argentine friends Cesar Cabero and Carlos Quevedo and Marco Giani, a well-known specialist in the genus the exhibition Copiapoa, Patriarchs of the Andes showed in all their glory some of the world’s most beautiful species of cacti, portrayed in their natural habitats.
With this installation, Festa del Cactus wants to denounce once again the deplorable phenomenon of illegal harvesting of plants in habitats, carried out by thieves and scoundrels without morals, who each year cause considerable damage to natural populations of rare succulent plants, already seriously damaged by climate change and human activities.
Huge was the satisfaction of obtaining, for this photo exhibit, the support of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Species Conservation Commission (SSC), Group of Experts in Cacti and Succulent Plants.
Only later did he focus on posed portraiture, beginning to do more structured and narrative projects.
He graduated from DAMS in Bologna while starting to attend the National Experimental Film Center photography section in parallel, where he graduated in 2019.
