The shamanic mirror and the Ad Libitum sound sculpture.

By Sergio Poggianella

An extraordinary opportunity for comparison between aesthetic visions and ethnographic realities, are offered by the exhibition of Michele Spanghero, at TRA Treviso Ricerca Arte, in which the installation of a sound sculpture, consisting of nine organ pipes fed by a medical machine for pulmonary ventilation, short-circuited with a toli (round mirror) belonging to a shaman from northwestern Mongolia. In such a context which roles does the shamanic mirror play in dealing with the sound installation of Spanghero? What suggestions, affinities, similarities and interpretations spring from this new confrontation that arose from a brainstorming between the artist and the exhibition curator? The two objects, the mirror and the machine, symbolically the first and materially the second, have the task of treating and keeping the patient alive.

Siberian Buriati shamans, from whom the bronze mirror comes from, believe that is the loss of the soul that causes the illness of a human beingand one of the main tasks of the shaman is precisely aimed to recover it. The toli (round mirror) - like the other shamanic parphernalia can count on a guardian spirit - performs different functions according to the specific cultural contexts: besides protecting the shaman from evil spirits by means of divination, it is aimed at the welfare of local believers in shamanism, is used to predict luck, to cure and possibly heal people.The thaumaturgical effect originating from Spanghero's work of art is added symbolically to the virtues attributed to the mirror used in shamanic healing practices.