If you have always thought about wine corks only as stoppers used to seal wine bottles, you’d better think twice. Now leftover wine corks are turn into art. The thousand lives of an extraordinary gift of nature, cork. This is the core theme of “Sug_Hero – Metaforme -The cork stopper among history, innovation and sustainability” exhibition which will be on stage at Palazzo Sarcinelli in Conegliano (Treviso), Italy from September 11 to October 30, 2021. The exhibition intends to tell, from the perspective of Amorim Cork Italia, the world’s leading producer of cork products, how this small cork seal is capable of great forms of sustainability.
The display was designed to stimulate the innovative, creative and cutting-edge use of cork, as a unique raw material. The exhibition path winds through the rooms of the charming historic Conegliano city building with a sensory welcome experience using the forest scents and the recognisable sounds of the decortication activity (the operation of removing the bark from the plant without cutting down the tree itself) and dwells then on the history and importance of wine cork stoppers.
A section is dedicated to the ETICO project, Amorim Cork Italia‘s cork stopper recycling programme, that was recently awarded the BBS award by the Bilancio Sociale Library, one of the most important Italian distinctions in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility. Operating since 2011, ETICO involves several associations and institutions that, in turn, mobilise around 1,000 volunteers and manage more than 5,000 collection points for corks throughout Italy. Over the last five years, an average of 100 tons of cork stoppers have been collected.
Last but not least, the display features the SUBER Design collection, a line of high-level design objects created with the recycled cork collected through ETICO. This is an initiative launched by Amorim Cork Italia in 2019, that has been offering a second life to recycled cork stoppers. It starts by transforming them into small granules which, after being combined with other materials, are used to make new objects such as lighting systems, tables, benches, umbrella holders or clothes hangers, etc.
Amorim Cork Italia is the Italian sales and distribution division of Corticeira Amorim, the world’s largest cork processing group, which supported in May 2021 the Portuguese representation at the 17th edition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture (which runs until November 21). The project, “In Conflict”, proposed by the Porto-based studio, depA Architects, chosen to lead the curatorship of the Portuguese Pavilion (Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, of the Fondazione Ugo and Olga Levi), is supported by about 100 linear metres of technical agglomerated cork. In Conflict followed in the wake of other projects supported by Corticeira Amorim that over the last decade have promoted cork in some of the world’s most important creative showcases. t is worth recalling Joana de Vasconcelos’ Lisbon ferry boat, “Trafaria Praia” (Venice Biennale, 2013), Tiago Sá’s “Curcubita” lamps (Venice Design 2017), and the cork flooring of Leonor Antunes’ installation, “a seam, a surface, a hinge or a knot” and Nacho Carbonell’s lighting design, “Inside a Forest Cloud” (Venice Biennale, 2019). This is a set of artistic interventions that also demonstrate the versatility of cork as a creative, innovative, cultural and educational element.
