exhibition
08 November 2016 > 20 November 2016

TOMÁS SARACENO – SHAHZIA SIKANDER

Carlo Scarpa Hall

The hall houses two video works, one by the Argentine artist, architect and performer Tomás Saraceno, the other by the Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander.

Tomás Saraceno, Poetic Cosmos of the Breath, 2013
Inspired by the work of Dominic Michaelis, the English architect renowned for having invented a solar-powered hot air balloon (1975), Poetic Cosmos of the Breath is a dome that inflates with the energy of the sun in certain climatic conditions. It utilises apparently simple materials to produce a surprising effect. The work is prepared at dawn: the air inside the balloon is heated by the greenhouse effect and the lightweight material slowly rises without the aid of machines or electrical energy. At the same time, the sunlight, filtered through the material, creates a vibrant rainbow of iridescent colour.
Conceived for Mobile M +: Inflation! As a temporary event, Poetic Cosmos of the Breath posits new possibilities of imagining humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

Shahzia Sikander, The Last Post, 2010
Colonization, its rhetoric, its perception and its impact on certain narrations are the diverse interconnected and overlaying questions that are tackled in the work The Last Post by Shahzia Sikander.
The history of the British East India Company alludes to the movement of people and goods: importation and exportation, rearrangement and the conditions of mobility characterised the traffic of people and goods in the Indian subcontinent and in Asia. This work sheds light on the British opium trade with China and is a metaphor for the end of British hegemony in the country.
The Last Post marks the first collaboration between the artist and the Chinese multi-instrumental composer and performer Du Yun.