A new installation has come up in Antarctica: Stellar Axis created by Lita Albuquerque explores space-greater-than-Earth by propelling us beyond what we think to be the ends of the Earth.
This work engages a rich history of land art, coming from Richard Long, Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. These large installations can be as accessible as central park or distanct as the antarctic, but often are heavily documented in photographs and video to maintain an immenent form of physical resonsoance.
I’m particularly interested in the physical installation of this work, that so many people gave their time to go freeze in abstract art in Antarctica. Albuquerque says something particularly telling about this in one of her videos:
What I’m interested in is not so much art as object but an art that is in relationship to the world and that shows you your own relationship to the world and to your life.
This is the precise legacy I’m hoping to embrace with landscape architecture, since gardens, parks, waterfronts, and atria are the places where so much of our relationship to the world is expressed and explored.
