Species Gratiae
Group exhibition · site-specific installation
- Venue
- In Limine, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie, Bologna · Festival Francescano 2026 — Festival Off
- Dates
- Opening 20 September 2026, 6 pm · Festival Francescano: 24–27 September 2026
- Curated by
- Irene Fedele
Species Gratiae is a site-specific installation conceived for In Limine, an exhibition hosted in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Bologna as part of the Festival Francescano 2026.
At the centre of the work is a living plant, an element usually perceived as secondary or decorative within a sacred space. Artificial grow lights, metal structures and two small paintings build a device of care around it. Light no longer serves only to make a work visible: it becomes a condition necessary to the survival and transformation of a living organism.
Species Gratiae thus stands in a threshold condition — between nature and representation, fragility and persistence, care and transformation — in dialogue with the idea of In Limine and with the theme of the Festival Francescano 2026, Sister death. The passage that rewrites Life, where the limit is understood not only as an ending, but also as a possibility of passage and change.
Placed before the image of Saint Rita of Cascia, the installation relates what lives to what is represented, transformation to permanence. The plant changes continuously, while painting holds and fixes an image. The beam of light, necessary to the growth of the plant organism, introduces a further tension into the space: a functional light that, in a sacred context, inevitably takes on another meaning. Care and transcendence come to overlap, letting a gesture directed at plant life take the form of a relationship with the invisible.
Elisa Selli, Species Gratiae, 2026. Site-specific installation: living plant, artificial grow lights, metal stands, two oil paintings on canvas, 10 × 15 cm each; dimensions variable. Installation view, In Limine, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie, Bologna, 2026. Festival Francescano 2026 — Festival Off.