Installations
From the 8th of September to the 24th of November, Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana presented a comprehensive programme featuring installations, archives and performances by the participants of the edition.
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Every Thing Eats Light
- TypeInstallation
- ParticipantAlexandra Daisy Ginsberg
- VenueThe Three Chimneys
Every Thing Eats Light, 2024 © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana / Ivan Erofeev
Every being on Earth eats light: plants convert sunlight into energy to fuel their existence; animals eat plants or eat other animals who eat plants. This fundamental truth reminds us of our absolute dependence on our fellow organisms. The Three Chimneys is Barcelona’s other monument to the power of light. Nicknamed the ‘Sagrada Familia de l'Electricitat’ (the Sagrada Family of Electricity) or the ‘Sagrada Familia de los obreros’ (the Sagrada Family of the workers), it was once a digestor of fossil fuels. Now, it is a staggering technological relic of the human desire to emancipate ourselves from our natural world.
The British artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg commemorates the evolution of chloroplasts, the plant organelles that capture sunlight and convert it into energy with her stained-glass window depicting Proterocladus antiquus. Discovered in northern China, this billion-year-old seaweed fossil – the size of a grain of rice – is considered the sister of the great, great-grandmother of all green plants alive today. As the plants’ shadows track across the floor with the sun’s path, the window is a memorial for the building’s troubled environmental and social history, for the present need for humans to see ourselves differently amidst ecological crises and for a different future – one that we have failed to create.
Every Thing Eats Light, 2024 © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana / Ivan Erofeev
2024
Stained glass
2.96 × 6.49 m
Courtesy of the artist
Commissioned by Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana
Supported by Vitralls Bonet
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