SHIVA
Located outdoors for five months in the garden of the Royal Palace of Portici in Naples, the piece entitled ‘Shiva’ (2022) is situated between Vesuvius and the sea. Like a tapestry of natural materials, it shows a black and white drawing of a septaria silhouette, made with earth from Vesuvius mixed with lava and Carrara stone. The piece is a time-specific installation, acting to create a large visual and temporal line. According to Bourriaud, time-specific art is the art of the era of globalisation, which prioritises “when” over “where”.
The materiality of the work ‘Shiva’ evokes the duality of everything that exists in the universe, speaking of time as both destroyer and creator –the fire of Vesuvius opposite the sea – and of the scale of geological ages. The materials –locally sourced due to their proximity and low environmental impact – allude to time and becoming: since, as Giordano Bruno argued, substance is eternal and generates nothing, but rather transforms. The work appeals to ecological awareness, as on an unprecedented temporal scale, a new sphere is sedimenting in the Earth’s crust: the technosphere, some sixty million tonnes of human technology that is destroying the biosphere.
