Sea urchins skeletons, labels, graphite.

Variable size, in the picture: 350 x 350 cm.

Ph. Eleonora Cerri Pecorella, Claudia Rolando.

Courtesy RUFA University.

Everything has its uniqueness, dictated by differences and peculiarities. Each individual has a specific take on reality, which is often based on people’s cultural and ideological backgrounds. Because of the subjectiveness of this vision, a superficial, distracted mind runs the risk of judging too fast, simplifying or neglecting the infinite complexities that make our world.

Every summer for 15 years, the artist and her father collected skeletons of sea urchins from the seabed, building up a collection which, despite the great number of pieces, does not contain two specimens that look identical. The installation, consisting of 910 echinoid dermaskeletons, represents a failed attempt to find a match between the various pieces. Each urchin is catalogued with a label indicating its diameter and is positioned on a node of an Amsler grid, a geometric grid used (by ophthalmologists) to reveal visual defects caused by imperfections of the retina.