“A Space for Pain” In addition to being the title of the work, it speaks of a space that, under certain circumstances, only art can hold. When the traces of pain obstruct intelligence, when pain is unbearable, perhaps only art can offer shelter. The work encourages an attentive attitude, meticulous observation, and deep reflection, generating a new understanding, promising new and varied unveilings.

At first impact, an oval stands out, framing a bone set in silver placed upon a tiny silver bowl, surrounded by countless white-painted seed shells, arranged in a meticulous process one beside the other. The work itself is a kind of litany, like a ritual of repeated words, where repetition fosters an introspection that connects the artist and the viewer with history, memory, recollections, dreaming, the mystical, and the sacred.

Repetition, in its effect of insistence, favors contemplation. In situations of intense pain, when words are not enough, the litany offers support, sustenance, accompanying without demanding meaning, like the contemplation of the work. The installation unleashes a multiplicity of symbolisms and meanings: The seeds mark the rhythm of the vicissitudes of vegetation, the alternation of life and death, darkness and light. And on this occasion, pistachio seeds, through their particular growth process, suggest the idea of pain as an experience that occurs, imposing transformation.

The bone is the framework of the body, a symbol of firmness, strength, and virtue, “bone of my bones” Genesis 2:23. A primordial element of being. In Semitic culture, saying “bone of my bones” was a way of saying: you are of my own essence. And furthermore, it contains the marrow, the “generative nucleus,” as a potential reserve. The central bone, with its phallic form, marks a place of completeness, potency, and fertility, but is also a reference to the lack and incompleteness inherent to the human condition. A state of completeness and absence of need impossible to attain. One detail: the chemical evolution of the universe ultimately appears within our very bones; we are made of stardust. Body, soul, and universe never cease to question us. Silver, as a metal, is symbolically a feminine, lunar, aquatic principle. The word argent derives from a Sanskrit word meaning white and shining.

According to Egyptian myths, the bones of the gods are made of silver. A symbol of purity. In Christianity: divine wisdom. On the other hand, from an ethical perspective, it also symbolizes the object of all greed and the misfortunes it provokes, such as the degradation of conscience. Blessing and warning.

Between the seeds and the second oval there is a white space. The white color covers the void left by the first traumatic impressions in the child when the maternal image fades, disappears, and absence settles in. Through white, the artist covers ineffable pain with beauty, transforming traumatic emptiness into a sublimated, aesthetically attractive void. Empathy with the pain of orphaned girls’ losses, their deprivation, with the environmental change that completely altered their lives. The white of helplessness?

Seeds – oval – bone – silver. Cervi possesses the creative talent to find in these elements an approach to the enigmatic side of pain.

The installation is located in a crypt, surrounded by solitude and silence, an environment that favors connection with the deepest part of oneself. There, Saint Alberto founded the Royal Home for Noble Orphan Girls and School for Female Students (1782), the first institution dedicated to the education of women in the region of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

The work shapes the environment, and the environment shapes the work. The crypt walls enclose a centuries-old memory, the ghostly presence of the people who passed through and inhabited the place for more than two centuries. The work dialogues with the space that shelters it and with its great historical weight, marked among other things by the visionary foundation of a man who, for the first time, included women in the educational proposal of the era.

Saint Alberto created a refuge for orphan girls, an environment that sheltered the hope of support, capable of seeing and granting value and identity to unprotected girls, like art that includes and embraces everyone and has the power to grant a contemplative gaze, according to Pope Francis. Taking care of these girls was also taking care of society. Like the gaze of an artist who unites the seeds in community, a symbol of future development.

By quoting the poetic words of Rumi as part of the work, Cervi speaks of the spiritual and the sacred that transcend religions, that go beyond, encompassing humanity regardless of religion. Like the whirling dervishes, emerging from the Sufi order, they dance in circles just as the seeds are arranged in the image. In a centripetal turn toward the center that seeks spiritual elevation. The experience of the sacred, according to Julien Ries, is constitutive of the human being.

Let us also not forget that the originality of creation, and of illumination, demands silent, meditative, and solitary work. Something that in this case both the work and the space intensely encourage.