She Wolves – Solstizio d’Estate

The Story

Kristin Jones became intrigued by images of the She-Wolf figure while visiting the 2000 jubilee exhibition, La Lupa Capitolina at Rome’s Capitoline Museum. Jones had long been fascinated by the transformation of ideas, stories and forms across time, and became  interested in creating an animated parade of She-Wolves on the Tiber River. She invited the curator of the exhibition, archeologist and scholar Claudio Parisi Presicce, to advise her. With the processions on ancient Etruscan black figure vases in mind, Jones set out to draw – to translate – more than ninety She-Wolf figures from Presicce’s photographic archive, which spans more than 2000 years of art history.

While working with the photographs, Jones imagined a vigilant, wild She-Wolf guarding her young on the banks of the Tiber and circling the walls of the Piazza Tevere. She had the idea to create a digital animation merging the real and art-historical She-Wolves, and to project it onto  the 30-foot high embankment walls.

The daunting scale and logistical feasibility of projecting onto the enormous site seemed at first insurmountable. In February 2005, Jones returned to New York to experience The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Central Park. There, she met architect Maurizio Anastasi, who was representing the City of Rome for the Sister City Conference on public art. Jones returned to Rome at the end of the month inspired by the vision and grandeur of The Gates, more determined than ever to bring life and contemporary art to the Tiber River. While walking along the river and observing city workers power-washing mud into the Tiber after the flooding of the river walkway, Jones had an ‘epiphany’ about creating images by simply cleaning the travertine walls – instead of an animation, she would make a frieze, a chronological procession of the individual She-Wolves drawn from the archive.

By conversing with stone restorers, Jones discovered multiple techniques for cleaning travertine, but none were feasible, considering the height and verticality of the wall and the need to  create a sharp image for the She-Wolf figures. The solution revealed itself to Jones one day when, standing on Ponte Sisto discussing the subject with a stone conservator, the sound of a generator drowned out the conversation. The city’s graffiti removal team was cleaning the graffiti from the surface of the bridge with high pressure hot water. Jones mused at the potential of collaborating with the sanitation department to power-wash the frieze, knowing that many sanitation workers rooted for “La Roma” – the city’s soccer team, whose mascot is the She-Wolf.

Finally, a proposal for the frieze was completed and presented to architect Anastasi, who convinced Rome’s Sanitation Department to contribute their time and equipment to the project, providing a power-washing team for creating the frieze.  

The Frieze

She Wolves, a tribute to Rome, displayed historical She-Wolf figures from the early 5th century BC to the 1600s, embodying the dichotomy between nature and culture. Jones felt that the icons were always there on the banks, always a part of the fabric of the city, that the frieze simply revealed them. The twelve most diverse She-Wolves were chosen from the ninety drawings created by Jones and rendered graphically by Francesca Fini. The figures formed a shadowed procession facing downstream on the right bank of Piazza Tevere, standing eight meters high and spanning the 560 meters between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini. The ephemeral quality of Jones’ figures defied their monumentality, connecting the present to the ever-flowing river.

Jones’ frieze is remembered both as a monumental piece of contemporary art, a promise to the City and an auspicious beginning of the Italian association Tevereterno. Solstizio d’Estate, the opening ceremony for the frieze on June 21, 2005 was Tevereterno’s inaugural event at the Piazza Tevere site. The banks of the Tiber River were illuminated with 2,758 fiaccole, outlining the site and representing the years since the founding of Rome. A 100-member harmonic choir directed by Roberto Laneri performed over the course of the night. The full moon and the thousands of flickering flames with their reflections drew more than 4,000 Romans to the banks of the Tiber for a passeggiata along the public space now named “Piazza Tevere.”

The Process

The power-washing technique, conceived of and pioneered by Jones, was dubbed by the Roman public as the ‘Michelangeloesca’ technique. Michelangelo was famously quoted: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chip away the superfluous material.” In this case, the wolves were already there, made visible by cleaning everything except the figures.

The issue of how to translate the vector drawings into 8-meter high stencils for power-washing was resolved by going back to the age-old technique of the grid system. A team of dedicated volunteers worked on their hands and knees  to create twelve stencils out of industrial-grade polyethylene sheets adhered to a net for structure, using a tennis court as a workspace.

The weeds were removed from the wall first. Afterwards, the enormous stencils were attached to a horizontal beam and pulled up the wall from the sidewalk above. Jones, the sanitation department, and volunteers worked from a bucket truck with a high-pressure power-washer to reveal the She-Wolf figures one by one. The figures were created simply by erasure of a fine layer of accumulated time on the walls.

Although the walls were built slightly more than a hundred years ago, the She-Wolf figures vanished in just under five years due to the rain and sun that nourished the growth of the biological patina.