MATERIALITY AND IMPERMANENCE

Gianine Tabja
MATERIALITY AND IMPERMANECE

Art as action…in where matter has been transformed

into energy and time-motion.
Lucy R. Lippard and Chandler
1968

The sense of place and the idea of displacement in relation to the

transformation of the territory became important in this stage of my work.
The materiales I was working with became the elementes, the protagonists,
the materiality of the elements speak and have the discourse in relation
to the space where they were placed.

In Who colonizes whom? a site specific work in Lang Craig (an area being
reforested and protected by The Woodlands Trust), I work with clay I took
from the site. I made plates of this clay and cement and, placed them upon
one of the hills simulating a grid, as a way of demarking the terrain. The
aim was to play with the posibility and risk of the land being used under
the logic of progress and modernity.
The period of time in which the piece was exposed to the natural enviroment
and climate subverted their physical quality and presence of the materials;
its materiality acquired ephemeral and impermanent characteristics.
The cement plates broke but the plates made of clay changed and adapted
their shape to the terrain.

I focused on this transformation and adaptation of the materials over time

and continued experimenting in the studio. I was interested in the tension
generated between the movement of the terrain and its stillness, a terrain
that was suspended and was being forced to adapt while the drops of water
counted the time and desintegrated it.

This durational piece was documented with photos and video.

Art itself might be partially defined as an expression
of moment of tension when human intervention in or
collaboration with nature is recognized.
Lucy R. Lippard
Overlay, 1983.
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND
2018