There is something deeply moving in the story of Emilio Costanzo. A former Sicilian greengrocer, almost eighty years old, who one day picked up a sheet of paper and realized that his story wasn’t over yet.
Emilio makes origami, but not the classic banknote swans. He reconstructs entire monuments, the Colosseum, the Tower of Pisa, the Temple of Segesta, piece by piece, with a patience that almost hurts to look at. And it does so using exclusively used scratch cards.
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The Temple of Segesta? 70,000 tickets. Fourteen months of work.
Every morning Emilio sits down, takes his colored cards and folds. Over and over again, not to win something, but to create something that lasts.
What makes his art truly special is the double message it carries with it — almost without wanting to shout it. On the one hand there is recycling: objects that would end up in the bin become breathtaking architecture. On the other hand there is a silent but very powerful denunciation of gambling addiction. “2,000, 7,000, 8,000 tickets a month,” says Emilio. Holding them all together, transformed into a sculpture, makes you understand better than any statistic how much money – and how much hope – is burned every month in Italian tobacconists.
His works were exhibited at the Anchovy Museum in Aspra, Sicily, where those who visited them were able to really stop and think. Not just how beautiful that replica of the Colosseum is. But what is behind each single piece.
Emilio’s story reminds us of a simple but necessary thing: creativity has no expiration date, and sometimes the real stroke of luck is finding — perhaps after the age of seventy — something that makes you feel alive.
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