L’erba del vicino

Ncontemporary is pleased to present “L’erba del vicino”, a site-specific project by Chiara Baima Poma (Italy, 1990) which will be hosted by the project room section of the gallery in Milan. The three-meters large panel, similar to an irregular fragmentation of a puzzle which seems to emerge from an ancient fresco, mixes technical research, social reflection and a profound autobiographical inquiry.
Created on a huge façade made of plasterboard prepared with a plaster composed of gypsum, fine sand and marble dust, the artwork gives the texture of a weathered wall. The entire work consists of a dry wall painting composed of a continuous surface, carved and then modelled in order to create a constellation of irregular fragments, with smooth edges, which evokes cracks and outcrops typical of deteriorated frescoes. The overall image reconstructed by the panels is that of a walled garden, populated by plants native from places the artist passed through: from the Italian Mediterranean scrub to the banana plantations of the Canary Islands, from the Australian eucalyptus trees to the Asian forests, up to the Senegalese baobabs. Each species represents a bond, an experience, a root that has marked the human and artistic path of Baima Poma. A portion of the sky, composed of rhombuses carved in bas-relief and gilded with gold leaf and bole, introduces a suspension element, while a landscape of rocks and arid soil defines the perimetral area of the artwork.
The artwork is rooted in the artist’s family storytelling, in particular in his grandmother’s memories of her parents who had emigrated to the United States, and is intertwined with personal experiences from Europe and Asia, also with periods spent in Senegal doing volunteer activities for Senegalese migrants in Spain.
In the piece’s heart lies the complexity of contemporary multiculturalism for example: migrating as an act of hope; the encounter between cultures as a wealth source; acceptance, as the possibility of being faithful to one’s origins without renouncing evolution. Identity, just like represented in the garden, is thought as a fertile space, where diversities, stratifications and alterations coexist. Here time is not linear, but circular as past and present overlap like layers of plaster. Absences transform themselves into spaces of possibility, openings towards the unsaid. Memory is not nostalgia, in this case, but a living presence, constantly transforming itself.

Chiara Baima Poma (Italy, 1990) lives and works between Italy and the Canary Islands. Her research draws on ancient histories, traditions, and popular rituals, reinterpreted through an aesthetic deeply rooted in Gothic art and the early Italian Renaissance. In 2023, she had her first solo exhibition in Italy at the Simondi gallery in Turin. Her artworks have also been exhibited in a series of Italian institutions, including the MAXXI in Rome (2023), Museo del Novecento in Florence (2025) and Complesso Monumentale della Pillotta in Parma (2025). Recently, she took part in the Astafore project, a group exhibition set in a farmhouse in Puglia and dedicated to the memory of the area: a dialogue between past and present that reflects on yesterday’s departures and the travel needs that characterize today’s generations.