Maria Cristina Carlini on Matter, Myth, and the Resistance of Sculpture

In an interview with exibart.com, Italian sculptor Maria Cristina Carlini discusses her practice ahead of her exhibition "Materie viventi" at Palazzo Reale in Milan as part of SUART 2026, curated by Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico. The show features works "Bosco" and "Filemone e Bauci" in the Cortile d'Onore and Giardino. Carlini, who has worked with reclaimed materials since before sustainability became an art-world buzzword, rejects the label of "sustainable art" as reductive, though she acknowledges Di Giandomenico's theorization of it. She emphasizes that form must be negotiated with matter, not imposed, and that sculpture should relinquish control. Carlini draws on classical myths like Philemon and Baucis not as iconographic references but as anthropological structures, lamenting that young people today are distant from myth. She believes art is timeless and that every material, even discarded, possesses an anima. Her public sculptures, acquired by institutions in the US and China, are never conceived as monumental or celebratory; monumentality arises from public commissioning. Carlini asserts that sculpture's physicality remains subversive in a digital age, as it has survived millennia and cannot be suppressed by digital media.