Tierra del Fuego is a polymorphic artistic project, made up of a collection of plastic artworks that portray the disappearance of a glacier landscape. It is inspired by the archipelago of the same name located in Patagonia at the confluence of Argentina and Chile, at the very southern tip of South America. The stunning, iconic landscape in this region of the world is gradually disappearing due to the effects of climate change, just as the Amerindian civilization, which existed in the area for 12,000 years, was decimated by Europeans. In connection with her film La mémoire des glaciers (memory of glaciers), which shows the acceleration of the melting process, Angelika Markul reveals memories buried in the ice and summon a series of phenomena and influences that together make up an end-of-the-world symphony: drawings and masks that evoke the lost traditions of the Yaghan people, nomadic fishermen from Tierra del Fuego; a sculpture, the mylodon, an endemic, prehistoric animal that is now extinct; and Iluvia lenta (“slow rain”) of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, who calls for a necessary reconnection with mother earth.
Angelika Markul continues to focus here on the obsessions that have been the centre of her work, including the passage of time, the flight of material and memory traces. Her artistic endeavours come from a utopia immersed in a complete archaeology and a tireless archiving of life’s traces, whether human, animal or vegetable.