Wolflight

WOLFLIGHT

Trilogy: The She Wolf as Shape of Time

Year:
2009

Sponsored by:
The Comune di Roma, TEVERETERNO, and Fondazione Volume!

Tiber River, between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini, Rome, Italy

Dimensions:
1800′ L

Materials:
Paper-backed aluminum leaf, adhesive.

Wolflight is a silver frieze of silhouetted Roman She-Wolves, hand-cut from fine aluminum leaf and adhered to the embankment walls of the Tiber River. The luminous procession of wolves crosses the river on Ponte Sisto, leading the public down to the banks and upstream evoking Rome’s symbolic history and rich mythology in contemporary visual language. The reflective figures were luminous both day and night, magnifying the existing site by mirroring changes in ambient light and constant flow of pedestrian movement.

Drawing upon the rich mythology of the City’s dawning on the banks of the Tiber, the silhouettes were traced directly from depictions in historical archives. Spanning from early 5 c. B.C.E. through the 1600s, these figures were recreated under the guidance of archeological historian Claudio Parisi Presicce.