Aldo Flecchia arrives in Haikou on 25 March with a precise plan: to carve, on the island, a work that is meant to stay. From 29 March to 10 April he works in a marble workshop in the city, alongside local sculptors, on a block of Carrara marble measuring 90 by 70 centimetres. The result is Figlia del Mare (Daughter of the Sea), a female figure emerging from a shell carried by the waves. It speaks of birth and of the generative force of nature, in a dialogue with the Italian tradition, from the Renaissance to classical sculpture, which it does not quote but reinterprets.
Born in Biella in 1945, Flecchia has worked marble and granite for more than forty years. In his works the figure seems to surface from the stone, as if it had always been held within it. “With this work I tried to bring out of the marble a presence that already existed,” he says. “Sculpture is a dialogue with the material.” Of the Haikou stone carvers, who work mainly on symbols of the Buddhist tradition, he says he found with them an affinity “of skin and of heart”.
The work is presented at the China International Consumer Products Expo, at the stand of the Salotto Italia–Cina, an Italian cultural salon in Sanya. It earns Flecchia the Sculptor of the Year award of the Global Gift – Hainan Expo Selection. The artist then donates it to the city, which displays it on the main street of the old town. In a city facing the sea, Figlia del Mare links two distant seas, the Mediterranean and the South China Sea, and remains as a permanent sign of friendship between Italy and China.
Amalart, which has followed Flecchia's work for years, conceived and organised the trip and curated the project: from the residency in the Haikou workshop to the presentation at the fair and the donation to the city. This is how Amalart understands its work with its artists. Not taking a work to an exhibition, but creating the conditions for it to be made in the place it is meant for.
![Simona Romagnoli, "Aldo Flecchia è lo scultore dell'anno" [Aldo Flecchia is sculptor of the year], La Stampa – Edizione di Biella, May 2026 (print edition)](/assets/percorsi/2026-figlia-del-mare-haikou/la_stampa_biella_flecchia.jpg)