Irene Zottola, Ícaro, 2021

In order to escape from the labyrinth in which they had been imprisoned, Daedalus made a pair of wings for himself and for his son Icarus. Flying would make them free. In his enthusiasm, after taking flight Icarus got too close to the sun, as a result of which the heat melted the wax that held the feathers on his back and he ended up falling into the sea and drowning. Over the course of history, a liaison has been forged between human beings and the sky; between the desire TO FLY and the physical and symbolic meaning entailed by flying. As a result, flight brings together contrary and complementary elements: the eternal and ascending as opposed to the perishable and descending, the hope and distress in the act of learning to fly and thus rising or plunging to the ground; life and death. Our desire TO FLY responds to our need to move one place to another, although we very often plunge into an abyss, as did Icarus.