The Global Soil Partnership (GSP), an organization established in 2012 and chaired by Ronald Vargas, General Manager of Soils, carries with it the mission of positioning them at a global level and promoting their sustainable management. The partnership, hosted by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), works to improve soil governance and guarantee its productivity towards food security and climate change mitigation for sustainable development.
Various possible opportunities are being explored, through the objectives of the UN (United Nations Organization) which today the FAO intends to establish and disseminate through different forms of declination, including artistic representation. This language, simultaneously combined with a scientific approach, aims to suggest further interpretations related to emergencies, in order to provide the population with a viable cultural means for a more aware and inclusive vision of the environment. December 5th is World Soil Day which aims to raise awareness in society about maintaining eco-systemic and human well-being;
This year’s theme is “healthy food in healthy soil”.Fertility loss is a major degradation process that threatens nutrition and is recognized as one of the most important problems globally. Regarding this topic, following a first exhibition on 5 December at The Sheikh Zayed Room at the FAO headquarters in Rome, the La Nuvola Gallery in Via Margutta, which has always been attentive to environmental issues, hosts the solo exhibition of photographer Stefano Lotumolo (Lucca, 1987) from 6 to 12 December. The exhibition, entitled Sip of Earth, is curated by Giusy Emiliano, art critic and permanent collaborator of the Land and Water Division of the United Nations Headquarters (FAO), and Alice Falsaperla, art historian and gallery owner, in collaboration with the New Art Way company, represented by the artist managers Tommaso Zijno and Alessandro Wingfield. Stefano Lotumolo is an artist who has repeatedly expressed his commitment to nature and to a future more aimed at the crystallization of traditions. His research has its roots in atavism and weaves a profound relationship with the environment and the communities that inhabit it. It investigates the importance of gestures and connections between people, between Asia and Africa, and offers the viewer a new individual horizon within the collective experience.
«I lived thirty of my years in a golden bubble. Then I leapt into the unknown. The world showed me the true face of reality, revealing its gifts of wonder and poverty. Then in 2017, while traveling, photography arrived, through which I perceived my different eyes, aimed at rediscovering the difference in a society that often tends to protect only its own borders”, explains Lotumolo. The photographic medium becomes a form of “pure testimony”, capable of communicating a message without filters. The importance of food is expressed, with Lotumolo, through care bordering on ritual, from cultivation to preparation, placing a reflection on waste and lack, with the aim of grasping the primordial hidden in reality. It presents itself as a transfer of alternative knowledge and shared experiences, beyond the Eurocentric ones. From a social point of view, there is also the creation by the photographer, in July 2020, of Radici Globali, “a social promotion association that I created with the aim of promoting a model of protection of rural communities in countries developing, through the provision of essential services. The intent is to be able to guarantee as many communities as possible access to water and food, the exercise of fundamental rights to preserve their roots”, says Lotumolo.
Photography by Domenico Flora
