Garden installation
Mantua, Italy

Partner: Structural design, Idea srl, Engineer Resp. Massimo Ragno, Verona; Technical
Supervisor: Daniele Donegà, Ilario Salvaterra
Setting up: Studio Engineer Gaetano Rubinelli, Verona, Italy
Lightning: Studio illuminazione Flavio Guarnieri – Filippi-Targetti, Bologna, Italy Project: Residential
Artist: Medhat Shafik
Period: November 2020
Place: Location near Mantua, Italy

Plan for a monumental installation of oak wood and other materials for a prestigious  private residence. The work, designed and made by the great master Medhat Shafik, is  located in an Italianate garden with shrub-lined avenues at the centre of a crossroads, and  is known as “La casa della luna”: the house of the moon.  

The intention was to build an archaic temple abounding in alchemic symbols and  mysterious engravings, making this place set apart from the garden a place of  concentration and meditation. Its semi-circular shape acts as an embrace, inviting people  to enjoy the beauty around it. In this, as in his other projects, the artist’s unique style  combines the evocations, colours and original lines of Middle Eastern culture with the  artistic vocabulary of the western avant-garde movements. The materials the artist has  chosen for the project, primarily wood and stone, are perfectly integrated into the context  of the trees among which the installation stands, and are the artist’s preferred materials  because of their intimate relationship with nature.