Aria

Aria: the human spirit and the relentless will to reach the sky, a metaphor for an irrepressible instinct.

The mythological figure Icarus dared to defy the gods by crafting wax wings, only to have them melt tragically near the sun. This unyielding longing for flight gave rise to countless ingenious projects that remained on paper until September 19, 1783, when the first hot air balloon soared above Versailles.

Aria is also a musical passage, a moment of detachment from the ground. The hot air balloon, humanity's first successful flight project, remains an enduring practice today—a symbol of freedom and an invitation to view the world from above. It is the simplest flying machine ever devised: stitched fabrics, a basket, hot air, and ballast. It symbolizes our ultimate act of defiance against our natural anchoring to the ground and embodies our innate yearning for flight.

The imagery of an “aero-static” journey invites us to a slow ascent from the earth toward freedom—a freedom intertwined with a story that reveals itself only during the flight. As we ascend, we realize that our fascination does not lie in the infinite vastness of the sky but in the earth below, now seen from a new perspective. The land becomes an expansive, borderless territory, freed from the boundaries we impose upon it. This shift amplifies our concept of freedom, expanding with every meter we rise from the ground.

Marcel Duchamp captured the air of Paris in a glass ampoule, perhaps seeking to materialize the intangible and transform air into art. It is as if he sought to anchor the freest of thoughts to reality, presenting it as a packaged gift for all, ready to be reopened whenever the desire for flight and freedom arises. Aria, like the air itself, invites us to reimagine our constraints, transforming the intangible into a vessel of liberation and creativity.