New - Giosetta Fioroni the golden bough

Inspired by the anthropologist James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a study devoted to myth, archetype, and symbolic stratification, the artwork presents itself as an image of passage, of transformation and cyclical renewal. The branch thus becomes a threshold sign, an emblem of a crossing to be undertaken.

The Golden Bough, understood as a symbol of knowledge and access to a deeper dimension of human experience, takes on an auspicious quality: a promise of return and regeneration. It is not what is cut that matters, but what continues to sprout; not an object, but a condition. A dynamic threshold that both separates and connects, holding in tension two states, two temporalities, two dimensions of human experience.

Giosetta Fioroni’s artwork celebrates the continuity of life, the capacity of art to preserve and renew symbols, and the cyclical nature of existence — an act of trust and hope. The Golden Bough is itself both key and sign of passage; as in myth, its value lies not in what it is, but in what it makes possible: the crossing. It reminds us that a threshold is never neutral; it demands attentiveness, awareness, and a willingness to change.

In Fioroni’s vision, the crossing is intimate and silent, entrusted to an image that invites pause. The threshold does not lead elsewhere in any definitive sense, but opens instead onto an inner possibility, a shift of gaze and consciousness.

At the base we see the “little house,” an object only seemingly simple. In reality, it is one of the artist’s most layered symbols, operating on multiple levels: it is refuge, a primary and archetypal space tied to childhood, emotional memory, and the idea of protection. It often retains a certain fragility: it is not the house of power or monumentality, but the inner house one carries within.

At the same time, however, the house is itself a threshold: the point of transition between outside and inside, between the world and intimacy, between exposure and withdrawal. In Fioroni’s artwork it becomes a mental space, permeable and inhabited by memory. It is also identity: the place from which one looks out at the world and to which one returns. In a poetics shaped by time, history, and collective memory, the little house suggests that every crossing, every threshold, requires a place from which to begin.

Placed within a site dedicated to travel, Rome Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci airport, the artwork invites us to recognize in physical movement a symbolic journey as well: every departure and every return entail transformation. It asks us to acknowledge an additional dimension to spaces of transit: not merely infrastructure, but symbolic sites of human passage par excellence. The airport thus becomes a modern gateway, a contemporary “sacred forest” where millions of destinies intersect, brush past one another, separate, and meet again. In this context, Giosetta Fioroni’s branch appears as a quiet sign of orientation, a promise of meaning within ceaseless movement.

“Curiosity is the very essence of culture”  Goffredo PARISE