Artwork: Stellar Axis: Antarctica, Lita Albuquerque, 2006
Stellar Axis; Antarctica was created by Californian based artist Lita Albuquerque in 2006 as an incredibly ambitious ephemeral art project inspired by Albuquerque questioning the place of humans in the enormity of infinite space and time.
The installation was created in Antarctica at the Ross Ice Shelf, and later replicated in the North Pole. It was comprised of 99 blue spherical structures arranged on polar ice calculated exactly to align with 99 stars. Each sphere’s diameter correlated to the relative brightness of each star. The installation was in effect a stellar map on Antarctic ice. And as the planet rotated on its axis, the alignment of spheres and stars shifted, creating a spiral of motion at the South Pole. This motion was enacted in a performance where 51 scientists and technicians from the nearby McMurdo Station research facility walked the spiral path of the spheres, their feet visibly tracing the unseen relationship of the planet, stars, and humans.
Albuquerque speaks about these epic connections in her art practice:
Artwork: Stellar Axis: Antarctica, Lita Albuquerque, 2006
"I am interested in change of scale: how the observer affects the object of observation; space as a void; non-space existing in time. By altering the scale and context of the grid (as a scientific tool of measurement), the grid becomes an artistic tool of perception.
The fossilized brachiopod from three hundred millions years ago appears to be an ancient remnant of star, waiting to be transformed back to its stellar origin.
Some brittle stars exist in the Antarctic and Arctic, and some are found even in the deepest parts of the ocean where there is no sunlight. Others have exquisitely developed crystalline lenses, formed from the bone in their skeletons, which focus light inside their bodies and enable them to see.
But this is not blackness, it is full of something from long ago with the potential of something yet to be.'"
(quote source: domus)