Israel Negev
A sculpture in the Negev
In 1995, Jean-Luc MEYER-ABBATUCCI realized an installation on two fields in the southwest of Israel near Ofaquim between Gaza and Beer-Sheva in the Negev region. Each field was one kilometer in diameter. NASA took the photo of the monumental sculpture. This was a unique experience carried out for the first time.
On 21 September 1995, Michael LOPEZ-ALEGRIA was prepared for mission STS 73 taking off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The journey was scheduled for a period of 16 days 300 kilometers above the Earth aboard Space Shuttle Columbia.
The artist’s and astronaut’s meeting would shortly transform into a great artistic adventure.
Jean-Luc MEYER-ABBATUCCI explained the sculpture projects to Michael LOPEZ-ALEGRIA: large scale works to create forms on a huge surface and his desire to introduce technology by taking pictures from a satellite, one of the most important scientific advances in human adventure.
Jean-Luc MEYER-ABBATUCCI wanted these forms to be identifiable from space as paintings viewed from the sky, works on “Earth” ignoring artificial boundaries.
In terms of representation, different types of satellite imagery are methods of offering different perceptions of an “object” engraved on the earth (SAR images, infrared, panchromatic, multi-spectral).
Facility photographs and NASA:
The circular installation was performed on three fields each measuring 1 km in diameter. Shortly after the harvest of wheat. Jean-Luc MEYER-ABBATUCCI burned forms visible from space using the residual stalks of the harvest.
The artist designed three works on three fields. The first was a triangle symbolizing the female, the second was the curbs of a woman and the third was a meandering sinuous line known as the Great Rift, symbol of the Syrian-African fault that stretches from Turkey to Mozambique through Israel.
Location and satellite photo:
Geological faults and human flaw:
According to the artist, the concept of fault refers to the idea that the earth moves beyond the principles of boundaries created by humans. The Great Rift is a geological phenomenon that continues its slow and imperceptible movement away from the earth several thousand years at a scale of millimeters: in about 50 million years, the Horn of Africa will be separated from the rest of the African continent and salt water will enter Lake Victoria.
Societies and their cultures are sources of permanent change and despite the desire for borders and protection, movement of people and ideas build the history of human adventure. It is in this sense that we must speak of “human vulnerability,” as a continuous process that changed the course of history. This “human vulnerability” is in perpetual motion, men are unstable, creating tears, “landslide”, more clearly in conflict.
The fault becomes a metaphor for human vulnerability and it is hard to communicate and transmit. It marks the course of an ever-changing human history.
Woman or Mother Earth:
In the Sumerian script, which was the first writing (it begins in Mesopotamia about six thousand years ago), the triangle was a sign or symbol for “woman.”
The triangle shown in the second field symbolizes femininity, another favorite theme of the artist: the woman is the source of life, she is Mother caretaker. The earth gives life; it is also a source of life.
Works by the artist inspired by the project:
