(De)Ossigenazione is a performance created during an artistic residency in Sozopol, Bulgaria, as part of the international project EMPACT: Empathy and Sustainability – The Art of Thinking Like a Mountain (co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme). Staged directly on the beach, the work invites the audience to symbolically immerse themselves in the depths of the Black Sea, a fragile ecosystem affected by eutrophication*.

The scene opens in a deep, almost oppressive silence that evokes the stillness of an anoxic sea. At the center lies a Bulgarian child—symbol of the new generations—wrapped in a green cocoon, an image of oxygen-deprived waters and the marine life slowly suffocating within them. Her slow, laborious movements make the agony of a collapsing environment palpable, and the audience feels its weight.

Suddenly, red gloves emerge from the cocoon, recalling algae of the Phyllophora genus, once abundant in the Black Sea and vital to its biodiversity. This gesture introduces a sign of rebirth: a memory of what the sea once was and what it could become again.

The metamorphosis continues with a chromatic transformation: the green cocoon gradually fades, giving way to a deep blue, the color of regeneration. Now the child, finally freed, dances on a blue fabric that is not merely a scenic element but a metaphor for a sea regaining its breath; her light, fluid movement evokes an ecosystem recovering strength, balance, and the ability to generate new life.

The title (De)ossigenazione plays on the dual meaning of loss and restoration of oxygen, turning the performance into a visual parable: from suffocation to release, from death to rebirth.