Adamo Macri

Zoophily

In Zoophily, Adamo Macri turns a technical term from botany into an unsettling meditation on desire, dependency, and the porous boundaries between species. In plant biology, zoophily describes the reliance of flowers on animals to transfer pollen: a choreography of attraction, seduction, and mutual benefit, where bright petals and scented blooms advertise nectar in exchange for the invisible labour of transport. Macri seizes on this structure of exchange and transposes it into a mythic register, staging a charged encounter between a satyr and a goat that oscillates between sacramental and profane.

Across his practice, Macri has repeatedly explored how bodies—human, animal, hybrid—function as sites of contamination and transformation. In Zoophily, the pollination metaphor becomes a way to think about how contact alters all participants. Just as zoomophilous plants evolve colours, textures, and forms to lure specific vertebrate pollinators, the figures here seem shaped by their reciprocal pull: the satyr and goat appear not as fixed, separate entities, but as co‑produced beings, each subtly reconfigured by the other’s presence. Flesh, fur, horn, and implied gesture act like petals and nectar, signalling needs and vulnerabilities that are not entirely under conscious control.

The work’s title quietly undermines any innocent reading of pastoral mythology. Zoophily is, after all, a system of use as much as it is a system of cooperation. The plant “employs” the animal; the animal, in turn, exploits the plant’s resources. Macri’s image stages a similar tension between mutuality and exploitation. The satyr—a creature already emblematic of excessive appetite—stands in for a human impulse to instrumentalize the animal world, while the goat hovers between companion, victim, and agent. The viewer is left to ask: who is pollinating whom, and at what cost?

There is also an undercurrent of theology and eroticism that links Zoophily to Macri’s broader interest in alternative rites and inverted devotions. The transfer of pollen becomes a kind of secular sacrament, a material sign of invisible exchange. Radu’s notion of “Alternative Waters” finds a parallel here: instead of holy water or baptismal cleansing, we encounter other fluids and other channels of passage—pollen, scent, breath, bodily excretions—tracing networks of influence between species. The work suggests that what moves between bodies is never neutral; it carries histories, desires, and potential mutations.

Visually and conceptually, Zoophily extends Macri’s long-standing concern with metamorphosis, contamination, and the instability of identity. By anchoring the piece in a precise biological term, he grounds the mythic scene in concrete ecological processes, reminding us that every act of looking, touching, or desiring is also an act of exchange. The artwork does not simply illustrate zoophily; it complicates it, showing how the traffic of life between plant and animal has its analogues in the psychic, erotic, and ethical entanglements that define our relationship to the more‑than‑human world.

"I will stare at it for hours, days, years. Amazing how it seems. Adamo always knows what feelings his art will bring to the surface. And sometimes, it's scary, when looking at his art you see yourself!"

~ Loreta Steffens (Languages: Lithuanian, German, Russian)

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"My wife would love this!"

~ Don Porcella (Artist, musician, New York City)

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"I like your art piece so much. A reminder of spring time, blooming willow tree branches, feathers, a flower under your chin or it's a 'pleura' meant? Zoophily fits best, as well as I would suggest 'Faun' cause the whole image/gesture reminds me of Pan. Who wonders!"

~ Rolf Schützek (Artist, photographer, Bavaria, Germany)

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"You own an irresistible charm. Your every gesture is art! I love you Adamo! Applause!"

~ Roberta Milanesi (Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Turin Italy)

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"It's a touch Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes!"
~ Phillip Wilcher (Australian composer and pianist)

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"A portrait reminiscent of a satyr or bird, or, as some have noted, of either Nijinsky or Nureyev suitably costumed to dance in L’Après-midi d’un Faune, Zoophily also evinces a triangular structure. The stylized horn on the head and other “natural” elements in the portrait remind me of Two Satyrs, a painting by Peter Paul Rubens; but Macri boldly crosses the boundaries of gender and species in this and other portraits. The longer I look, the more enraptured I become, a word I use advisedly. I am seized and carried aloft by a mythical bird, or elevated to a strange kind of heaven by the feathered Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl."
~ Kenneth Radu (Alternative Waters: a Personal View of Recent Macri Portraits)

Zoophily, 2013

Photography: Chromogenic C-print

46 x 46 cm

Edition: 4