Angelika Markul

Tierra del Fuego, 2018.
Solo show. Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France.

Tierra Del Fuego is a polymorphic art project, consisting of a set of plastic works dealing with the disappearance of a glacial landscape. It is inspired by the archipelago of the same name which is located in Patagonia, at the confluence of Argentina and Chile, in the extreme south of the American continent. The unique landscape and characteristic of this region is gradually disappearing under the effect of climate change, as well as the Native American civilization that lived on the land for 12 000 years before being decimated by Europeans. In connection with his film The glaciers Memorywhich shows the acceleration of the process of melting, Angelika Markul reveals the memories buried in ice and convene a series of events and influences that together compose a symphony end of the world: bronze objects evoking the lost traditions Yagans of these nomadic fishermen of Tierra del Fuego, a sculpture of the body of a mylodon, this prehistoric animal endemic désor- but disappeared or cartographic reliefs of this land to the forgotten paths. The artist has designed this work echoes the poem The Iluvia lenta ( “slow rain”) of the Chilean poetess Gabriela Mistral, which calls for a necessary reconnection with Mother Earth.

Angelika Markul here continues the obsessions that are central to his work, such as the passage of time and the flight of memory traces and material. His practice grew out of a utopia, one of total archeology, a seamless archiving traces of life, whether human, animal or plant.