Author: Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela
Installation.
Video projection with 6 audio channels.
Sound: Pedro André.
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is an immersive installation built using six elements with images in motion and an intricate sound landscape within a large-scale architectural and sculptural structure. Combined, these elements (images, sound and space) create a fascinating environment that subtly addresses and questions our current condition. The installation perfectly combines a series of references that echo different scenarios of time and space such as Japanese cicadas, the process of digitalizing a publication on sculptures, images shot in rural northern Portugal and the construction of pyramids. These references give a feeling of interconnection and harmony.
This polyptych gets the onlooker involved in a space with reflections, images and representations that evoke a dreamlike state, creating introspective landscapes and night journeys.
The work emphasizes and embodies the stratified constitution of a past, present and future moment, one that is material and symbolic, defined by micro and macro scales, as well as our active position as editors in a changing world. It is a magical, mysterious and poetic work whose paradoxical, monumental fragility projects a space of humanist freedom. On providing a moment of sublime contemplation and at the same time representing a state of alertness, Caló and Queimadela are able to counteract the trend of modern life dominated by highly controlled regimens of abstract interpretation. This installation was presented for the first Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize and won by a unanimous jury vote.
