Tales from the Subterranean (2025)
Tales from the Subterranean is a sculptural installation that examines how abstract representation is enlisted to give form to models of ecological and environmental accounting that are currently emerging to “value” nature.
The concept of “natural capital,” which refers to the total endowment of land and natural resources available, including air, water, soils, forests, minerals, and the life-supporting ecological systems, aims to create a consensus around the pricing, valuation, monetisation, and financialization of nature.
This valuation furthers what Marina Vishmidt describes as “a tendency in imaginaries…in which it seems that the relationship between an activity or entity and the capitalist form of value needs to be established in order for that activity or entity to be recognized and protected.”
The work reflects established as well emerging measures of subterranean wealth in a series of a few hundred small, handmade, abstract sculptures that materialise the technical images used for making visible, understandable, and immediate the interactions between mining activities, economy, society and the environment.
Created from commonly available materials, the simplicity and fragility of construction communicates a certain irreverence towards the predictions, scenarios, theories and historical accounts presented - the tales through which scientists, analysts, policy advisors, and environmental and ecological economists write the history of the future.
Realised with the collaboration of William Sacher.
Tales from the Subterranean, 2025, installation : bamboo, metal, coloured gels, thread, paper, ink and wood. Dimensions: 854 x 610 x 152 cm. Installation view, Móvil, Buenos Aires. Photo credits: Horse and Sparrow.
