Shifting the landscape in Italy

While visitors to the Asterisk will know Ekarasa Doblanovic best for her rich, playful and pigmented works, she is gaining ground internationally with her earth-based Imagine the Land Project.

Over at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Imagine the Land Project’s Tocca la Terra is underway. The work is a collaboration between Ekarasa Doblanovic and Karma Barnes who, over ten years, have worked with thousands of people of all ages to produce collaborative, ecological artworks through socially and environmentally engaged art programs. In Tocca la Terra Italian soils were gathered by hand from landscapes surrounding the city then ground into fine pigments and used to create a 15m long installation in the museum’s Ambiente #2 exhibition hall.

“The project is building on our methodology of community engagement and connection to local place within a global environment,” the artists have said. In order to connect with the community and their land, participants are invited to engage in a tactile and sensory connection to notions of nature, impermanence, and interconnectedness through collaboration. In line with this, participants have been making can make small clay vessels coloured with soil pigments to place as offerings in the installation.

“The work explores collective ontologies of the earth that we work upon and seeks to foster compassionate relationships between the participants and the environment that nourishes and sustains us…. This is the potent power of art, that so beautifully draws people together, mapping their connection to each other and the land.”

To view a short video of the work click here, and to see other works in the project visit this page.