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Dacia Manto (Italy, 1973) |
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Dacia Manto’s work transfers her observation of nature and the landscape onto a level of formal research, using a dual approach combining science (via the re-elaboration of technical data) and the senses. Manto’s installations are thus the product of the union of the objective analysis of reality and the intimate reworking of it, in an attempt to achieve deep understanding of the elements that compose it. |
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Gilles Clément’s theories on the “planetary garden” and the “third landscape”, which have inspired many works conceived as a totalising natural experience, have played a particularly important role in the development of Manto’s thought. The Fluviale installation is an exemplary case. It is made from various kinds of seeds, which the artist scattered on the banks of the River Arno once the life of the project was over. As in the case of other installations, the drawings also prefigure free development in physical space unconditioned by nature, for the lines are assimilated by the vegetation and vice versa.
The project drawn up for Green Platform appears as a sort of update of the work entitled Inlandis, made in 2005. Built using several sheets of eco-plastic, derived from maize, at a distance of four years from the first work, this piece reproduces the area of the South Pole, which is gradually shrinking due to global warming. Antarctica is home to 90% of the world’s ice mass. However, the mass is progressively dwindling year by year and the effects can easily be measured on the entire glacial sea. It has been estimated that over 13,000 square kilometres of marine ice have been lost over the past 50 years. Internally, the huge shelf currently loses between 90 and 150 square kilometres of ice each year. Much of this melting has occurred at the far northern tip of the Ronne Ice Shelf, one of the most important defence lines of western Antarctica. Three of the main ice shelves, present on both sides of the peninsula, have already disintegrated: Wordie, Larsen A and Larsen B. In February 2008, the Wilkins Ice Shelf also collapsed. Manto has thus used this work to focus our attention on an enormous problem, inviting us to consider the geography of the South Pole as a living organism, whose protection is vital for the future of the entire world.
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Inlandsis 09, 2009
bio plastic
approx. 500 x 600 cm
installation produced by CCCS, Florence
Courtesy the artist.
Photo Credit: CCCS, Firenze; Valentina Muscedra |
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Inlandsis 09, 2009
drawing on printed page
Sketch for the installation at CCCS, Florence
Courtesy the artist |
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