Comment on Contexts
HYPOGEA is designed to make the complex interweaving of content and form, color and material as well as cultural and natural heritage tangible. The origin of the carpet of unusual shape is the hypogeum (substructure) of the Colosseum in Rome and the related pictorial fragments of Colosseum displayed in the room invite a journey into the past and future of the Grand Tour.
HERITAGE CARPET creates (as a series) the connection between knotting (and weaving) according to the latest technical standards with the oldest models – the bacteria: A micrographic take of the bacteria-sample from Colosseum is used for form- and color-pattern of the carpet. HERITAGE CARPET is hence inspired both by the natural heritage of bacteria (of Colosseum) and by the cultural heritage (of Colosseum as well as of knotting and weaving). It became a “hyper-image” that both implies domesticity and is at home in public space. The paradigm of knotting – connecting the threads into a harmonious whole – thus becomes the art of linking and this in turn becomes the art of carpet. HERITAGE CARPET creates the connection between knotting (and weaving) according to the latest technical standards with the oldest models – the bacteria.
Sabine Kacunkos research and visualization of microorganisms, dust, patina or aerosols clearly show how, for example, bacteria – the archetypal forms of life – form collaborations in times of crisis and thus become survivors from whom humanity can learn. The related pictorial worlds are not accidental finds from nature or mere reproductions of aesthetic phenomena but are always the results of an artistic transformation emerged by virtue of revealing the transformation processes: Materialized in the carpet, the textile archetypes find their origins in the archetypal forms of life and vice versa.
BIG BΔCTERIA – under this EU-patented name, Sabine Kacunko has been documenting the microbially induced transformation processes in their application to art and cultural heritage, health and society as well as to analogue and digital ecosystems since 2003. Bacteria stand for animated materiality and ubiquitous diversity. Through their upscaling using the best recording and display technologies, they emerge in our consciousness as BIG BΔCTERIA under artistic direction: as the oldest, most numerous, smallest and structurally simplest organisms, they become vivid models for diversity and multifacetedness as well as for intelligent and environmentally friendly coexistence. A selection of Kacunko’s BIG BΔCTERIA images has been presented on a high-end display from the Samsung SMART Signage QMR / QMT series, thus demonstrating the entire color and shape spectrum of bacteria in ultra-high resolution. They appear as blueprints for re-materializations in home design.
AMPHITHEATRUM MUNDI is an artistic-curatorial project by Sabine Kacunko that retrieves and envisions the past, present and future of “Grand Tour” exemplified with one of its ultimate goals, the Colosseum in Rome. In collaboration with the project-curator Dr. Slavko Kacunko and the local curatorial teams, Sabine Kacunko selects Colosseum-related artworks and objects from across the various collections and sets them on the respective site in the contemporary context of the own Colosseum-related artworks, series, and projects like INVINCIBLE, HERITAGE CARPET, ZOE, and BIG BACTERIA (ongoing since 2003).
With temporarily responsive rearrangements of a particular museum space, AMPHITHEATRUM MUNDI explores an innovative, hybrid exhibition and mediation practice by addressing the public understanding of the interdependence between the natural and cultural heritage. The project is tied with the forms of public discourse (Citizen Science), the prioritized Sustainable Development Goals (Global Health) and the basic sciences for sustainable development.
