LACMA sits on land that was a nourishing marshy ecosystem for thousands of years. The location produced a trove of fossils discovered during site preparation for the David Geffen Galleries. To connect the new building by Peter Zumthor to the soil it stands on, artist Mariana Castillo Deball is creating the commissioned artwork Feathered Changes, which will spread over 75,000 square feet of the campus in an expansive meditation on time, geologic history, and the LACMA site. 

A series of “islands” scattered across the east campus will be surrounded by a brushed pattern inscribed into the Plaza with a method closely related to the way concrete is textured before it is set with a broom or rake, and the techniques used in dry Zen gardens to create patterns in sand, reflecting possible circulation routes throughout the plaza and the organic shape of the David Geffen Galleries. The concrete islands are imprinted with fragments of the artist’s feathered serpent drawings, based on fragments of ancient murals from Teotihuacan.

The Feathered Serpent is an ancient Mesoamerican symbol representing the connection between the earth and the sun, soil and water, place and transformation. 
The landscape of the installation will also be inscribed with animal tracks native to California, creating an organic drawing on the surface of the huge ground plane. With Feathered Changes, Castillo Deball acknowledges the many Indigenous people of the Los Angeles area and their connections to the larger indigenous histories in our continent.

Concept

The proposal entails a series of concrete sculptural / utilitarian volumes with different embossing textures and reliefs, together with a constellation of stepping stones.

An interesting aspect of the intersection of the private and the public space in the area relates to the history of furniture manufacturing in Mechelen, and the role that woman had on weaving chairs outside of their houses in the neighbourhood. Some archival material shows how these chairs, belonging to the domestic realm, occupied the streets, as the women sat outdoors in groups to weave together.

The weaving material was reed, which until the 19th century was part of the low-lying marshland. Afterwards these canals were covered and the natural riverbank landscape disappeared as well. The overall project hopes to reintroduce the natural banks, bringing back a piece of ecological history, including fish, insects and small animals.

The proposal begins with sculptural volumes and stepping stones as its core elements. Concrete forms are embossed with patterns inspired by woven chairs and wooden cabinets, gradually incorporating imprints of local vegetation and animal life as they extend toward the water. These elements transition from domestic references to part of the urban landscape, linking the city’s manufacturing history with its natural surroundings.

Material samples and references

The landscape is often inscribed by animal tracks, fossils, and other traces of activity that create an organic drawing on the soil’s surface. For the public commission that I recently developed at LACMA in Los Angeles, I experimented with these textures and animal prints on concrete. I started with a series of material tests in my studio, creating imprint on clay with rope, brushes, stones, and linoleum stamps of animal tracks from California.

I also experimented with a hard brush, imitating the way concrete is textured before it is set with a broom, in order to achieve a non-slippery surface, a technique that leaves a subtle permanent trace on the concrete’s surface. This method is closely related to the techniques used in dry Japanese Zen gardens to create organic patterns in sand. While the trace left on sand in the Japanese gardens needs to be recreated by the master gardener regularly, in this case it became a gesture that set on the concrete’s surface.

Concept

The compass rose is as a navigational symbol that let us know where we are and how the wind is blowing, a star pointing to the cardinal directions, it is used to define the wind currents and orientation in map making. Compass roses became elaborated ornamental designs in dutch maps since the XVI century, including colors, flowers, and unique elements depending on the part of the world being represented.

The proposal presents a compass rose extruded into different flat colored shapes, which overlap and let the design being contemplated from different angles.

The sculpture plays with the idea of spinning, making a reference to dutch windmills and toys that involve an object rotating. This playful element appears on the top of the artwork, presenting an helix with six extensions, each one with a playful object at the end. An important element in the sculpture is lighting, which is integrated into the artwork, illuminating the different colorful elements and creating and interesting shadow play.

The Stadsplein in Amstelveen would welcome a playful artwork, that speaks to people from different generations and backgrounds. An artwork that tells a story about the local context, but also refers to a wider geography and the place we occupy as humans in the world. The work aims to establish an immediate connection with the community, referencing Amstelveen’s historical ties to trade, water, and cultural identity. Its colors and lighting enrich the quality of the public space, providing visual landmarks during events and markets, while also promoting safety, cohesion, and a sense of place.

Technical Description

The sculpture consists of a central steel pole supporting a series of horizontal metal plates, spaced 25 cm apart, with a culminating element integrated into the pole. Each plate features cutouts forming unique wind rose shapes, stacked concentrically around the central axis. The artwork measures approximately 8.3 meters in height and 5 meters in diameter. Gradually decreasing in diameter toward the base, the plates create layers of transparency and subtle “see-through” effects, emphasizing the sculpture’s three-dimensionality and dynamic presence.

Designed to be experienced from all angles, the overlapping plates and cutouts create a sense of motion, giving the sculpture an almost kinetic quality.

Its lowest element starts at 245 cm above the plint surface, preventing any possibility of climbing and ensuring safety for visitors. The artwork is made of durable painted steel, providing minimal maintenance while ensuring resistance to weathering, corrosion, and long-term wear. The artwork has a integrated lighting system, which can be serviced periodically in coordination with the square’s management team. Integrated lighting also improves night-time visibility, contributes to public safety, and reinforces the sculpture as a recognizable landmark during evening activities.

The sculpture base consists of a brick plint connecting the artwork with the landscape design and the overall architectural concept.

The sculpture coexists harmoniously with pedestrian circulation, events, and temporary installations, maintaining clear sightlines and unobstructed access throughout the square.

From 2010 to 2019, St. Pölten Cathedral Square was an archaeological excavation site. During the excavations, not only were Roman and medieval buildings, but also the mortal remains of around 22,000 people were discovered who were buried in a cemetery at this site which was used from the 9th century until 1779. Mariana Castillo Deball's site-specific installation "Dead, I am Still Paper" explores the memory and materiality of the site through the history of paper production. Inspired by objects found among the bodies, the installation reflects on the ephemeral nature of materials such as fabric and paper. Deball links this theme to Goran Petrovic's novel "Paper with Watermarks" („Papir sa vodenim znakom“), which tells of the process of the "democratisation" of paper through the use of rags for its production and the history of the same material as a metaphor for vanity and transformation.

In the 14th century, European workshops began turning old clothes into paper, making it far more accessible than the parchment used previously. Rag collectors played an important role in sourcing materials, even extracting textiles from burial sites, sometimes leading to outbreaks of disease. Deball's work encourages viewers to think about the balance between preservation and decay and the stories that everyday objects tell about our identity and history. "Dead, I am Still Paper" awakens a deeper connection with the past and an awareness of the fragility of memory. And last but not least, it provides welcoming shade in a central location in the city.

Special thanks to curators Joana Warza, and Lorena Moreno Vera; to my studio team Silvia Scandola, David Reiber Otálora, Silvia Andrade and Macarena Cox; to the Tangente installation team, and to publishing house sexto piso, for publishing Papel con sello de Agua and letting me translate some fragments.

In bringing together a multiplicity of ceramic beehive shapes from various historical and geographical contexts, Firesong for the bees, a tree of clay acts as a kind of ‘repository’ that ‘re-pollinates’ the city with forgotten iconographies, technologies and architectures of apiculture, beyond the dominating modern paradigm. Between a display structure and a critical device, it invites to reflect on the human-non-human interdependencies and labour shaping the human-bees relationship to this day. Bees are the most important pollinators in the eco-system, but the ecological crisis is causing a significant decline in bee populations world-wide. The work asks us to think not only about artefacts becoming obsolete, but also about the extractive human-led processes that lead to species extinction. It is an invitation to sense and learn from the noises, smells and histories of the collective more-than-human intelligences that make the work.
In the bee-friendly city of Bruges, the artist collaborates with Biesous/ Margot Hinnekens and Uther Smis, an initiative of young bee keepers from the region, who care for the bees during the five months of Spaces of Possibility. The project is done with respect to the bees' wellbeing and the biodiversity in the park and the city. They will continue to take care of the bees after the end of the Triennial, when the artwork will be dismantled. Some of the elements of the structure will be donated to the apicultural circuit in Bruges, continuing their lives in the region.

Text: Sevie Tsampalla

To-day July 9th takes as a starting point the ongoing piece To-day,  started in 2005. The second edition was shown in 2006. This most recent piece in 2016 was the third edition.The piece will be completed after 365 editions. The present is a mixture of different temporalities, where events, objects and people from multiple times coexist.

What is the present? When does a passage become a moment? When does an occurrence turn into an event? To-day consists of a newspaper publication and a stage; hosting a fictional character that exists only in one day, but throughout the years.

The character can surf freely on this date in different years, jumping back and forth in a 24 hours spectrum around time. Each time the piece takes place; the character is shaped by this one-day history. It is important to mention that the date is decided by the situation and not by the artist.

The date always coincides with the official opening of the exhibition, in this case the 9th of July. The documentation and visual material departs from newspapers, travel logs, birthdates, obituaries, holidays, observances, and any other traces related to this particular date.To-day is an archive of events, with an arbitrary point in common.

A contemporary elective affinity the term Mesoamerica is used to describe a region in North and Central America that was shaped by shared cultural traits. It covered an area now occupied by Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. In pre-colonial times a large population lived there and various indigenous cultures emerged, including the Aztec, Huaxtec, Mixtec, Olmec, Zapotec, Maya, and Cotzumalhuapa cultures. Impressive reliefs as well as large, sculptures of animal figures, mythical creatures, and deities are among the surviving artefacts from the Cotzumalhuapa culture.

Inspired by local archaeological sites, artist Mariana Castillo Deball has created a public artwork that plays out across the streets of Eastbourne, into Towner Eastbourne's gallery building and out to the South Downs. Walking through the town I followed a pattern on the pavement that became the magnified silhouette of a woman's profile is, explains Castillo Deball, "a work that can be experienced as an image, a walking path or a narrative". On this two-hour walking route around the streets of Eastbourne, pedestrians will discover a chalk-stenciled rope that traces an unexpected route through the town, outlining the silhouette of a woman's profile. Followers of the walking trail will encounter several sculptural objects embedded in the pavement, each relating to objects that were buried with The Frankish Woman, whose ancient remains were discovered in Eastbourne at the Anglo-Saxon cemetery on St Anne's Hill. The locations for the objects are shown on the map as a loop in the rope. A third element to the work takes place at Whitbread Hollow on the South Downs where the shape of a giant hairpin, the most magnificent of the funerary objects, will be inscribed in chalk. In contrast to the nearby Celtic hill figure, The Long Mari of Wilmington which is cut into the chalk a few miles north-east of Eastbourne, Castillo Deball's geoglyph will be evanescent, disappearing over time. Visit towner.gallery/CreativeCoast for more details on this work and how to see it. Alongside her Waterfronts commission, Castillo Deball has curated an exhibition for Towner Eastbourne. A drawing, a story and a poem go for a Walk will run from 29 May 2021 to 16 January 2022.

Several things attracted my attention during the visits to the Noord-Hollands archief and the city of Haarlem, but there is a constant, which can be compared to what Svetlana Alpers defines as “The Mapping impulse in Dutch art”.

It is not a coincidence that The Dutch were the first ones who produced maps as wall hangings and probably the first jigsaw puzzle (from a map). This shows only a part of the wide production, dissemination, and use of maps throughout the society. Mapping in the 16th century was a common, even a casually acquired skill. Each man made at least a single map in a lifetime. It seems to have been an accepted way to pay one’s respect to one’s home while contributing to the knowledge of it.

The Noord-Hollands Archief, and specially the Atlas section, contains a vast collection of maps, engravings, photographs and other visual material.After going through the cartography collection, it is striking to see how the countries landscape has been changing throughout the centuries. This development has two faces: the actual transformation of Dutch geography, in an attempt to gain land; and from the other hand, the quick development of cartography since the 16th century.