Jenna Basso Pietrobon

Three Eyes

Three Eyes examines cultural and biological inheritance through the symbolic language of the triptych, exploring the seed as both a source of life and a symbol of fertility in agriculture and humanity.

Three Eyes
2022 -
Ceramic, photography, drawing, oil on canvas, acrylic on canvas

Traditionally associated with religious painting, the triptych structure is reimagined here as a contemporary framework for examining the fragile continuity between land, body, and culture. Rather than depicting fertility alone, the works explore cycles of regeneration and loss that shape both ecological and human systems. Seeds, soil, and organic forms appear alongside layered images and sculptural interventions, suggesting the fragile mechanisms through which life, knowledge, and cultural memory are transmitted across generations. Each work merges painting, drawing, photography, and sculptural elements, allowing different materials and temporalities to coexist within a single structure. The “third eye” becomes a metaphor for expanded perception—an attempt to look beyond surface appearances and recognize the deeper systems that sustain life. Within the broader trajectory of the practice, Three Eyes extends the investigation of land systems into symbolic and cultural territory, where ecology, ritual, and inheritance intersect.

0
Prologue

A room becomes a womb—
soft walls of agricultural felt,
warm as breath,
quiet as soil before dawn.

Seeds hang like offerings,
small futures waiting to be taken,
carried outward
to wherever hands will open them.

Three benches form a circle,
ceramic fossils pressed into their skin—
a place to sit,
to listen,
to remember.

A voice begins in Chennai,
devotional, ascending.
Church bells answer from rural Italy,
their echoes braiding
with animals’ calls,
with the whisper of seeds,
with the low hum of fields at work.

The soundscape moves like prayer,
like labor,
like wind across a harvest—
melding sacred and earthly,
ritual and root,
body and ground.

Here, time slows.
Here, everything returns
to rhythm,
to warmth,
to origin.

I
Vessel

charcoal on paper
earthenware ceramic
charcoal on paper

A woman carries water.
A cow carries milk.
Within the body,
another life can grow.

We call the cow holy,
bow before
what she gives.

What of the woman?

What does a body carry?
Water.
Hunger.
A child taking shape.
The memory of another body
held inside its own.

Between them,
a clay vessel
holds branches
in its open mouth.

What makes a body sacred—
what it carries,
what it gives,
or the life
already its own?.

Break the Mold Vessel
Earthenware vessel
50cm x 50cm x 110cm

White Cow 02
Charcoal on paper
120cm x 85cm

Woman Walking, Rajhastan
Charcoal on paper
300cm x 120cm

Detail

II
Broccoli Meditation

Acrylic on canvas
Charcoal on paper
Light sculpture

Alone, I sit and watch.
The air hums.
My mind wanders—
a monkey swinging from branch to branch,
restless in its hunger for elsewhere.

But sometimes it stops.
Breath slows.
A leaf trembles,
and the monkey becomes the tree.

To calm the mind:
broccoli, broccoli sprouts—
green minds of the earth.
Their quiet rise through the body
a small prayer against the fire
we call stress.

In their stillness,
I remember mine.

Broccoli 01
Stoneware glazed, with basket weaving elements and light components
30cm x 35cm x 75cm

Monkey in the Forest
Acrylic on canvas with charcoal drawing
240cm x 210cm

Detail

III
The Search

Light sculpture
Oil on canvas
Charcoal on paper

The monkey holds her baby—
instinct intact.
The elephant’s trunk stretches—
a question I haven’t answered
in six celibate years.

Work took the space
where a partner might have been.
Now I search
for the spark itself—
man or donor,
love or lab.

Leafy greens fill the fridge:
folate, iodine, faith.
Science calls it fertility support.
I call it prayer.

Between the monkey’s pouch
and the reaching trunk,
I stand—
a woman preparing
for a child who might arrive
through love, luck,
or a single cell choosing me.

Monkey Mother, and Baby
Oil on canvas
110cm x 150cm

Detail

Elephant Trunk and Foot
Charcoal on paper
180cm x 80cm

Broccoli di Bassano
Stoneware, glazed
60cm x 110cm x 10cm

Broccoli di Bassano leaf
Stoneware, glazed
30cmx 58cm

IV
Artichokes

Acrylic on canvas
Charcoal on paper
Light sculpture

Like a child,
I stare down at my feet—
the floor a safer landscape
than faces.

Something about not belonging
makes me smaller.
Eye contact feels
like light too bright to hold.

So I look down—
at the shoes, the tiles,
the tiny scuff that says:
you exist, quietly.

I’ve done this for years.
Even now, grown,
the tilt of my head
returns me to that first silence—
a child’s view
of a room too tall.

Artichokes were my favorite then.
The slow ritual of peeling,
leaf by leaf,
toward the soft heart inside.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing—
learning how to arrive,
one layer at a time.

Temple Floor, Chennai
Acrylic on canvas and drawing
200cm 220cm

Detail of drawing

Artichoke 01
Stoneware glazed, with basket weaving, natural textiles and light components
40cm x 45cm x 90cm

V
The Source

Oil on canvas
Acrylic on textule
Light sculpture

The source is slowly running out.
Not the energy—
that still returns,
like a tide I’ve learned to trust.

But the eggs.
The invisible clockwork
that once spun in silence,
now stuttering in its rhythm.

Water—
the first mother,
the shape of creation.
Without her, nothing.

And I can feel the tap
tightening,
its slow, deliberate closing—
a sound so soft
it breaks the heart.

Asparagus on the plate,
green spears of faith.
They say it helps—
a key vegetable
for conception.

So I eat,
as if chlorophyll
could rewrite time,
as if water,
just once more,
might turn itself back on.

Shower in Tamil Nadu
Oil on canvas
120cm x 170cm

Artichoke 01
Stoneware glazed, with basket weaving, natural textiles and light components
40cm x 55cm x 93cm

VI
Pumpkin Eating Tiger

Oil on canvas
Charcoal on paper
Light sculpture

The past, the present, the future—
I carry them all in one spine.

My past self keeps returning,
knocking on glass,
asking to be remembered.

The present looks straight at you,
steady and unsure,
already fading at the edges.

The future waits,
her foot stepped on
by the one who came before.

Beside me, a tiger glides—
my zodiac, my mirror—
moving the way I dream to:
confident, female, hungry.

Tigers eat pumpkins.
I imagine mine split open
in autumn fields,
soft orange moons
between her teeth.

Maybe time is this—
each self devouring the next,
and calling it grace.

Woman and Tiger
Oil on canvas
150cm x 220cm

Detail

Detail

VII
Dawn and Dusk

Light sculpture
Oil on canvas
Light sculpture

Celery hums in the ribs of the earth,
its pale bones drinking the dark water.
Kale spreads above it, rough and wise,
a skin of chlorophyll, breathing the sun’s patience.

Beneath the rafters of night,
the bat unfolds its soft geometry of sound—
listening to what roots remember,
mapping the invisible with heartbeat and echo.

Then the rooster ignites—
a flare of red and gold in the throat of morning,
calling the world back from its shadowed pulse,
shaking dew from the leaves of sleep.

And so the circle turns:
from celery’s vein to kale’s lung,
from bat’s ear to rooster’s cry—
one body of light and chlorophyll and sound,
breathing in rhythm with the earth.

Yin and Yang.
Dawn and Dusk.
The hush and the call.
The pulse between roots and sky.

Kale 01
Stoneware glazed, with basket weaving, natural textiles and light components
40cm x 50cm x 120cm

Celery 01
Stoneware glazed, with basket weaving, natural textiles and light components
45cm x 50cm x 150cm

Rooster and Bat
Oil on canvas
120cm x 170cm

VIII
Holy Cow and the Peacock

Charcoal on paper
Oil on canvas
Light sculpture

The holy cow—
mother, giver of milk,
still offering
even as the ground beneath her hardens.

Beside her,
the peacock stands—
its tail rising
like a slow, deliberate tree.

They share the same field,
though it is no longer whole.
Concrete veins
cut through the soil,
a quiet death
spoken in the language of renewal.

Once, fertility meant rain.
Now it means survival.
The cow holds patience—
the woman.
The peacock holds pride—
the man.

Here, the sacred persists—
not untouched,
but enduring,
a pulse beneath the surface
refusing to fall silent.

Holy Cow and Peacocks
Oil on canvas and concrete
360cm x 180cm

IX
Three Portraits

Charcoal on paper
Oil on canvas
Light sculpture

Left
In pale ochre and muted ash,
I turn toward memory.
Light gathers on the cheekbone
like dust on old glass.
This gaze listens—
to what has spoken,
to echoes behind me.

Center
In iron reds and orange flame,
I meet the room head-on.
The air trembles.
Here, I am present—
a pulse of flesh and breath,
steady within the storm of looking.

Right
In blue and gold,
I look beyond.
Shadows lengthen into question marks.
This is the gaze of becoming—
of what is not yet formed,
of distance touched by light.

Together
Three colors, three directions—
a triangulation of being.
Left recalls,
Center inhabits,
Right imagines.

Between them,
I am subject and witness,
the body stretched across time.

Smaller works

Limited Edition Photographs and Postcards