Soils as emblems of the periphery of the Western world in Elisabetta Benassi’s video made in Sardinia for the “Site Specific” project cycle at the invitation of the museum directed by Cristiana Collu.

The cycle of Site Specific projects, started in 2006 with the work of ZimmerFrei, continues its aim of opening a dialogue between the museum space intended as a place of artistic research and cultural promotion and the surrounding area. The artist invited this year, Elisabetta Benassi, presents a video work continuation of the Suoli series, begun in 2005. Large photographs, real 1:1 scale maps, of warehouse and car demolition sites. Marginal and completely anonymous places, in which entropy has settled to the point of making everything useless and unrecognizable, which appear like horizontal deserts where the distance and the usual relationship between the viewer and the thing observed is abolished.

The soils appear as emblems of the periphery of the Western world, a cumbersome chaos of matter, impossible to recycle but from which arises an idea of ​​a mobile and constantly changing landscape. Elisabetta Benassi’s photographic and video exploration goes beyond the visible, to the point of incorporating what remains outside the frame and which escapes knowledge. The continuum of images extends over a much larger terrain than that which the feet traverse. The Sardinian soils, photographed during a previous stay in Barbagia, reflect the remains and ashes of the fires for the feast of Sant’Antonio in Torpè and Mamoiada in the culminating moment of a ritual that involves the whole community.