“Voglio che per la mia opera l’inceneritore sia un luogo di dialogo. Sollevare questioni legate alla moralità, alla mortalità e alle responsabilità, per questo ho usato la storia indesiderata del luogo che è immondizia, e la metafora del santuario come luogo di incontro.
”
For the 6th edition of Arte all'Arte, Pier Luigi Tazzi invited Jamaican artist Nari Ward, who chose the incinerator in Poggibonsi as the space for his work.
"Nestled in the typical Tuscan landscape stands, in all its necessary incongruity, a technologically sophisticated incinerator. This is the place chosen by Nari Ward for his work, a large, walkable sculpture whose base is an embankment rising next to the incinerator, which is actually a former landfill covered over: it covers what remains of our consumption, our needs, and our desires, more or less fulfilled, and which we no longer want to see, which we have wanted to remove from the horizon of our sight, even though we are aware of its discomfort.
This is already an essential part of the themes addressed by Nari Ward: what the current culture chooses to preserve and what it chooses to eliminate from its historical memory, what is decided to be sacrificed without any claim to sanctity and through a process of reducing the value and dignity of what has nonetheless been, what is, and what constitutes the toxicity of the residues of our productions and our consumption.
The work consists of a camper with translucent white alabaster walls, its front blown apart and buried in a pile of metallic residues produced by the incinerator. Inside, the sanctuary unfolds. On the walls, there are Teflon bags, the completely impermeable material used to contain the toxic residues of the incinerator, like ex-voto in a votive chapel. In the middle, there are seats made from car tires.
At the back, the semicircular wrought iron altar – also a tribute, along with the alabaster, to local craftsmanship – upon which countless red candles are lit. A sanctuary, therefore, properly oriented east-west, as a place of pause and contemplative self-reflection, a scene of a ritual without officiants, but also a symbolic and displaced sacrificial belly of the waste-destroying machine, an ethical temple dedicated to mortality and its processes."
Pier Luigi Tazzi, “Arte all’Arte VI”, 2001
Interview by Jérôme Sans and Pier Luigi Tazzi
What is your work about?
It is a caravan made of alabaster that seems to have gotten stuck in a pile of debris. Inside the caravan, there are stools made from tires, a small table full of candles, and bags filled with corn, wheat, and oats. I chose to work with a caravan because caravans are one of the main products of Poggibonsi. Why did I choose Poggibonsi? Because it is an industrial city that was almost completely destroyed during World War II. It is truly ironic that their main industry produces mobile homes. The site of the work is a small hill adjacent to the incinerator, a space chosen because it has an untold history. The hill-landfill is made up of accumulated and buried material that decomposes and returns to nature. It is a very ordinary process, concentrated and made systematic. I want the incinerator to be a place of dialogue for my work. To raise issues related to morality, mortality, and responsibility, that's why I used the unwanted history of the place, which is garbage, and the metaphor of the sanctuary as a place of encounter.
The choice of location is very interesting because you propose a Tuscan scenario behind the scenes, a truly real and contemporary hidden part. It’s somewhat similar to the Centre Pompidou. But in this place, what hasn’t been conceived as a stage?
This is a place that people try to deny, but it is a place that is significant for many reasons. I think it is very important to bring things to light to allow people to reflect on their own lives. And this idea of light is fundamental to the work, and I refer to the light of the incinerator’s fire, the light of the sun, and the light of the candles inside the sanctuary.
Debris has always been a central material in your work, but you’ve never combined waste with a precious material like alabaster. How do you see this change?
Alabaster is a material that has a lot to do with light, it diffuses light, and it’s this alteration that interests me because it creates a truly special atmosphere. It is very important to find a balance between the darkness and the seemingly negative connotation of the incinerator’s residues on one side, and on the other, a brighter and more contemplative space.
Does the use of candles and alabaster not carry a funeral connotation, especially when combined with an incinerator?
That’s exactly why I wanted my work to take the form of a caravan. As you also said, the caravan refers to the concept of pleasure and leisure, to transience. So, the concept of movement is fundamental to this work, even on a visual level; a shape that moves into another, through similar references, strengthens the idea of transformation.
Alabaster is used to make figurines and other kitsch objects: now, even turning it into a caravan, isn’t that process akin to kitsch?
I agree. I don’t find it kitsch, but rather playful. And like a big toy, I like this idea because it frees it from the gravity of death. Working with the incinerator staff was an extraordinary experience that allowed me to witness a powerful transformation using fire, which, despite being part of this industrial-scale process, still maintains a certain intimacy with the material. In other words, the incinerator is a machine that erases, but leaves traces of recognition.
What is your relationship with "bricolage" and especially with that of African Americans? Isn’t the art of bricolage still the art of slaves?
For me, bricolage is taking a material and giving it a function it doesn’t normally have. It’s a very intelligent process because it involves a very high level of invention. I enjoy the challenge of changing someone’s expectations by surprising them with new combinations.
“Arte all’Arte VI”, 2001
Credits
Nari Ward
Illuminated Sanctuary of Empty Sins, 2001
Billboard, Poggibonsi, Arte all'Arte 2001
Courtesy Associazione Arte Continua – San Gimignano (SI)
Photo Elsa Bialkowska.
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