I look at the present as an archive and transform findings from the shoreline into a material record of the Anthropocene: works of photography, sculpture and installation using driftwood, corroded iron and eroded ceramics. Matter is central, and the sea acts as an agent that returns what we have discarded.
Rather than explaining, the project invites us to look closely and to read the human trace inscribed along the coast.

Land Art video installation. The initial gesture from which the project emerged.

Introduction

Archaeologies of the Anthropocene: Fragments of a Wounded Planet was born during a walk along the coast while I was preparing and searching for inspiration for a Land Art performance as part of another project. That journey, documented in a previous installation, was not yet part of Archaeologies of the Anthropocene, but it became the initial gesture that gave rise to this new body of work — an unexpected drift or rupture from the earlier project.

During that walk, along an eroded stretch of shoreline, the sand revealed layers where natural matter and human waste coexisted as if they were geology: melted plastics, oxidised metals, concrete, pigments, fibres with a fossil-like appearance. These were not ruins of the past, but residues of the present transformed into strata. The landscape functioned as a living archive, recording within its own materiality the human trace upon the territory.


Conceptual Framework

The project situates itself at the intersection of art, archaeology and ecology, with affinities to Land Art and field-based practices. It proposes an archaeology of the present within the context of the Anthropocene, understood as an era marked by a metabolic rupture with nature. Waste is no longer absorbed by biological or geological cycles but instead becomes stratified.

The coastline thus functions as an involuntary archive where non-degradable materials accumulate, gradually incorporated by time as vestiges. Eroded matter becomes sign, texture becomes narrative, and the landscape writes, with our remains, its own material chronicle.

Exhibition Structure

The exhibition is organised into four sections that trace a journey from discovery to critical metaphor:

  • What the Tide Refused to Take: Real objects presented as museum artefacts, evidencing an altered planetary metabolism.
  • Figures of the Shoreline: Assemblages and sculptures made from collected materials that evoke creatures, symbols or totems.
  • Paintings of the Subsoil: Paintings of the Subsoil
  • Layers of the Present: Photographic strata in which waste becomes integrated into the landscape as if already fossilised, anticipating what may become the geological archive of the future.

Each section combines documentation and poetics, underscoring a central idea: what we encounter is not an imagined representation, but the direct result of a material relationship with the environment.

Intention and Relevance

Archaeologies of the Anthropocene addresses a broad audience: students, educators, professionals in the arts and sciences, as well as anyone interested in the relationship between aesthetics and ecology. The project fosters a dialogue between image, memory and environmental crisis, revealing how our trace already operates as a geological layer.

Ultimately, the coast reveals itself as both mirror and archive. In the words of the project:
“This is what we are when the sea returns what we have thrown away.”

The exhibition is organised into four interconnected thematic sections, tracing a progressive journey from discovery to critical metaphor:

What the Tide Refused to Take

This section opens the trajectory of Archaeologies of the Anthropocene: Fragments of a Wounded Planet, transforming the remains collected in a cove on the island into real objects presented as findings.

Figures of the Shoreline

The section “Figures of the Shoreline” occupies the second place in the thematic structure of the exhibition. This area focuses on the transformative power of waste, where the fragments found acquire new visual identities.

Paintings of the Subsoil

“Paintings of the Subsoil” constitutes the third thematic area of the exhibition. This body of images offers a visual immersion into textures and terrestrial strata that, paradoxically, recall abstract painting.

Layers of the Present

“Layers of the Present” brings the thematic journey of the exhibition to a close. Composed of photographic strata with embedded waste, this series of images establishes the project’s central perspective: the documentation of the human trace as a geological layer.

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