Page 31 - Nihil Alchemia CRUCIBLE Issue One MAY 2020 Flip Book

Similarly, Renato Leotta envisages an endless
Newtonian landscape garden, where gravity, not
humans act upon nature. Visitors are invited to
remove their shoes and walk across the terracotta
tiles which form the beautiful and poetic La Notte
di San Lorenzo. The tiles document lemons he let
fall in his garden in Sicily, rather than harvest. I
imagined the clay as still wet, and could almost
feel the weight of each lemon by the impression
it left. Hear its gentle thud.

In Mesk-Ellil, Hicham Berrada uses tricks of lighting

to coax the famed night-blooming jasmine to
release its exquisite sweet perfume during gallery
opening hours. He offers up pleasure to us, and
also perfectly illustrates how humans are prone to
shape the world for our own indulgence.

To view Pipilotti Rist’s Homo Sapiens Sapiens I join
the bodies lined up on the floor, heads resting
on long sausage cushions. The colourful, highly
saturated video is an oval projection that hovers
above. It feels like looking though a distorted lens. Nikaya is an artist and
designer based in Berlin.
She studied Media Arts
Images spin, are mirrored and merge into each and completed a Master
other in kaleidoscopic fashion. Two naked of Architecture after
women—two Eves exploring the Garden of becoming increasingly
Eden—dance and frolic on tree branches, and fascinated by buildings
float curled up above the greenery. Close-ups and embodied spatial
of fruit and bodies squash together, juices from experience. With
strong interests in
fleshy pulps flow freely. It is bewitching and easy phenomenology and the
to be absorbed. intersections between art,

science, psychology and
The overall experience of Garden of Earthly philosophy, she is drawn

Delights was tremendously enriched by the to provocative work
artists’ choices to immerse visitors in their pieces. which encourages new
By tapping into the full spectrum of our senses, perceptions.
it created a more embodied experience that felt
intimate and playful. It freed feelings and elicited
a powerfully visceral response, that was also
provocative and encouraged self-reflection.