Time.news – A fluorescent play of lights that simulates the iridescent surface of the water and then the writing, which appears dramatically in the darkness, ‘Help’, the alarm cry of the oceans. And “What about the 8%?”, The new installation by Maria Cristina Finucci, conceived and set up for the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles.
Inaugurated in the patio of the institute, the installation, which will remain until October 18, poses the burning issue of detergent pollution in the oceans. Has anyone ever wondered what happens to the millions of liters of detergent that pour into the seas every year? It is the residue of the laundry, millions and millions, done every day on the planet; because detergents are biodegradable but not completely, when it is good at 92%. And the remaining 8%? What happens to that 8%? Does anyone care about that 8%? Here is the sense of ‘What about the 8%’.
Designed for the Contemporary Week 2022, the installation reproduces the marine surface in the institute’s patio, directed with great activism by Emanuele Amendola. Finucci wants to give the visitor the impression of being in the middle of the sea, immersed in the water; and right there, unlike the real world, the dissolved detergent is visible thanks to a reagent that colors it. Result: an unnatural fluorescent effect. And as daylight falls, the oceans call for help: the cry “HELP”, by now the artist’s stylistic code.
The residual plastics have created five huge, boundless clods floating on the water produced by what each of us carelessly abandons: bags, rubber slippers, abandoned buckets, bottles used only once, glasses and plastic plates thrown away. Architect, artist, but also environmental activist, Maria Cristina Finucci has been denouncing the problem of plastic pollution in the oceans for years.
He does it with the mighty energy of those who want to stir everyone’s conscience, but also with the grace and grace of a poet. With the projects of WasteLand and the establishment of the Garbage Patch State, the fictional state founded on 11 April 2013 in Paris, at the Unesco headquarters, he made concrete the basic figure of this complaint; and with an extraordinary sensitivity he was able, with great anticipation, to place the accent on the theme of caring for the ‘common home’, the planet.
The inauguration of the art installation was accompanied by a conversation on these issues between the artist and Marisa Caichiolo, an artist herself, founder of Building Bridges Art Exchange in Santa Monica and curator of DIVERSEartLA. The debate focused on the impact that provocative and visibly surprising art can have on awareness of the current climate emergency.