Maria Cristina Finucci with One Ocean Foundation and Officine Maccaferri, Ariston Thermo Group
Cortile d'Onore - Università degli Studi di Milano
A project of ethical and media impact created by Maria Cristina Finucci and curated by Alessia Crivelli lights up the central lawn of the Cortile d’Onore.
Maria Cristina Finucci
With about two tons of plastic caps – gathered with the help of Università Roma Tre and Caritas – contained in red mesh sacks used for food packaging and enclosed in a metal framework, Finucci makes four gigantic letters of the world HELP: an appeal to mankind to stop the poisoning of the seas.
The installation covers an area of 19 x 15 meters. This is the third time the artist has sent out an SOS, after writing HELP at the Foro Romano (2018) and on the island of Mozia in Sicily (2016).
“During the course of the years in which I have created installations in different parts of the world to protest the invasion of plastic in the oceans,” she says, “my project has been transformed, going beyond the limits of the environmental question and putting the individual, and the entire life of the planet, at the center.”
In 2013, in Paris, Maria Cristina Finucci founded the Garbage Patch State, a federal state composed of five islands formed by plastic abandoned in the oceans, with a total size of 16 million square kilometers, making it the world’s second largest country in terms of area.
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