At the Campo dei Giganti, the boundary between what is “finished” and what “might become” is as thin as a sheet of paper. It is within this furrow that Daniele Papuli situates his investigation. With his new scultografia (sculpture-graphy), Cartomastodonte, he operates a semantic graft between two materials shared by the same destiny: the olive tree and the book.

The project stems from a collaborative initiative with the Polo Bibliomuseale and the Museo Castromediano of Lecce, which funneled over 35,000 books destined for pulping from libraries across Puglia via an open call. Much like the olive trees, condemned by Xylella to become the “waste” of a wounded landscape, these books were destined for destruction.

Papuli intervenes in this “cultural waste,” transforming the book into the constitutive module of a gargantuan installation. He was supported by numerous workshop participants who contributed to its construction over twenty days between June and July 2026.

The artist exposes the book’s skeleton, opening covers and spines as if they were vertebrae, layering them to create a mapping of invented plant fibers.

“I considered the book in its skeletal structure, in its soft or hard covers, in its spine: it was opened almost as if they were vertebrae, roots that overlap, crowd, and thicken.”

The book ceases to be waste paper and becomes root and sign, integrating itself into the ancestral landscape of the Field. There is a profound symmetry between the Giants whitened by lime and Papuli’s Cartomastodonte. While Ulderico Tramacere’s Land Art operation transformed dry olive trees into calcified prehistoric sculptures, Papuli responds with a fossil form of paper: the olive trees, lost souls that, through the “Cura del Bianco,” re-emerge as monumental architectures; the books, fragments of knowledge that, through the graphic rhythm of the work, thicken into an osmotic epidermis.

Cartomastodonte is a work destined to undergo the metamorphosis of the elements. Nestled in the “bitter and damned”post-Xylella territory, the installation welcomes the scirocco, the tramontana, and the rain. Over time, the books will transform and compact, becoming an organic substance indistinguishable from the surrounding earth.

“Time and the moods of time will transform it: it will become almost an osmotic epidermis that changes with humidity, rain, and sun, becoming a recumbent fossil form.”

To navigate around this island of paper during sensory visits is to reflect on fragility and persistence: Papuli demonstrates that nothing is truly wasted if there is a gaze capable of restoring its dignity. The “book-root” and the “tree-monument” thus coexist in a single, lunar narrative of rebirth, where primary matter returns to become symbolic life.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.