Shifting Geologies (2020-ongoing)

Shifting Geologies, 2020-ongoing, Installation view (detail), Mixed media after simulation of the rock formation process, phosphorescent acrylic tubes on bricks, magnifying glass, illustrations on acetate sheet,40m2, What the eyes cannot see, the heart cannot feel, Kunsthaus Dresden - Municipal gallery for contemporary art, DE, 2021

With Shifting Geologies, an ongoing and constantly expanding artistic research that began in 2020 and has been in constant motion ever since, the artist Silvia Noronha directs her gaze into a possible future. In her installation, she refers to what archaeological artefacts might look like in a distant time, and at the same time she addresses what they will reveal about the way we treat our environments today. In a process of exposing materials to extreme heat, the artist imitates a process that is part of geological developments - for example, the formation of metamorphic rock, which is created by increasing temperatures or pressure deep in the earth's crust, but which retains its solid state during mineralogical trans-formation. Man-made materials such as electronics or plastics, residues and remnants of civilizations combine with natural materials in Silvia Noronha's objects, allowing us to draw conclusions about human activity in the environment. Fused together and pressed into one another, the objects, presented like excavation pieces, reveal something about what human civilization leaves behind and what a geology might look like after man-made and natural materials have merged over time.
In doing so, however, Shifting Geologies does not paint a dystopian picture of a supposed future, but rather asks what it might look like.

curated by Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz & Vincent Schier 

Shifting Geologies (2020-ongoing)

Shifting Geologies, 2020-ongoing, Installation view (detail), Mixed media after simulation of the rock formation process, phosphorescent acrylic tubes on bricks, magnifying glass, illustrations on acetate sheet,40m2, What the eyes cannot see, the heart cannot feel, Kunsthaus Dresden - Municipal gallery for contemporary art, DE, 2021

With Shifting Geologies, an ongoing and constantly expanding artistic research that began in 2020 and has been in constant motion ever since, the artist Silvia Noronha directs her gaze into a possible future. In her installation, she refers to what archaeological artefacts might look like in a distant time, and at the same time she addresses what they will reveal about the way we treat our environments today. In a process of exposing materials to extreme heat, the artist imitates a process that is part of geological developments - for example, the formation of metamorphic rock, which is created by increasing temperatures or pressure deep in the earth's crust, but which retains its solid state during mineralogical trans-formation. Man-made materials such as electronics or plastics, residues and remnants of civilizations combine with natural materials in Silvia Noronha's objects, allowing us to draw conclusions about human activity in the environment. Fused together and pressed into one another, the objects, presented like excavation pieces, reveal something about what human civilization leaves behind and what a geology might look like after man-made and natural materials have merged over time.
In doing so, however, Shifting Geologies does not paint a dystopian picture of a supposed future, but rather asks what it might look like.

curated by Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz & Vincent Schier