The installation – part of the solo show The Specter of Malthus, curated by Matteo Lucchetti at MA*GA in Gallarate – consists of a virtual-reality video viewing station, consisting of the headset and a circular area filled with crushed rock salt with a revolving stool in the center. Wearing the headset, one experiences being lowered into the darkness of a rock salt mine located two hundred meters below sea level, within which a series of the artist’s drawings and collages (taken from the Paradossi dell’Abbondanza series) come alive, accompanying the viewer into the tunnels and caves shaped by the salt beds. Progressively sinking, we witness an extractive history of mineral, animal, and human resources, and the creation of currencies that give an abstract value to the planet’s assets, as if, by falling, we arrive at the epicenter of the problem and the finiteness of the capitalist system. The sounds accompanying the video are specially composed by the artist using the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) technique, recorded by chewing food, and compare the consumption of resources to an insatiable human appetite.
The Specter of Malthus
2020
Virtual reality video installation, Oculus virtual reality device, ASMR sound, color, animation, 4’30’’; rock salt, swivel stool, iron tank, ø 250 cm. Installation view, MA*GA, Gallarate; The Drawing Hall, Grassobbio (BG). Photo by Renato Ghiazza, Alessio Baratella. Courtesy: the artist; MA*GA, Gallarate; The Drawing Hall, Grassobbio
The Specter of Malthus, by the artist Marzia Migliora, is a project promoted by MA*GA – Gallarate Art Museum, curated by Matteo Lucchetti, created thanks to the support of Italian Council (6. Edition, 2019), a contemporary art promotion program of the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo (General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism)
