Tomás Saraceno Exhibits Air at Hobart’s Mona Museum

The Argentine artist uses spider webs, aerosolar sculptures, pollution particles, and radio waves to illuminate the invisible in a major new solo show.

Tomás Saraceno draws our attention to the air around us in the exhibition Oceans of Air, which takes place at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) from 17 December 2022–24 July 2023.

'We live entangled lives, and as Torricelli, a student of Galileo once said, we are all always "living submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air",' Saraceno said in a statement.

Among Saraceno's strategies for helping us to better understand this ocean are spider webs from his 'Arachnophilia' project, which are woven by different species of spiders—some social, some solitary—many of which were collected from the artist's studio. Saraceno provides the spiders with a carbon fibre frame which they then build upon, working in series in the same space, adapting to it and to each other's innate architecture.

Saraceno described webs as 'a material memory and diagram of the spider's drift through the air'.

'The light he shines, especially on the universes spun by social spiders, combining their skills to complete their webs and create their nature-culture, gives us in our entangled ecology much to dwell on,' said Mona's Artistic Director, Olivier Varenne.

In a work newly commissioned for the show, plant specimens were gathered from around Hobart, including sites burned by bushfires and hazard-reduction efforts. These 'herbarium diptychs' will be the focus of a new publication by Saraceno and Mona featuring a collection of perspectives on different cultures' relationships with nature.

Other works in the exhibition include the multimedia installation We do not all breathe the same air (2018–ongoing), which includes fine particle pollution collected from across Australia.

The different coloured dots of We do not all breathe the same air are created using a machine called a Beta Attenuation Mass Monitor (BAM). The machine pumps a measure of air through a glass fibre strip every hour, resulting in lines of dots that range in colour depending on the amount and type of particulates in the air. Emissions from vehicles, coal and gas-powered electricity generation, and fires create black soot, while a red tint can be attributed in part to the mining of Australia's iron-heavy earth.

'Oceans of Air flows towards shared responsibilities with the worlds we inhabit, knowing that not all have the right to breathe, and that not all breathe the same air,' Saraceno said.

In January 2020, Saraceno demonstrated the power of renewable energy sources, masterminding a solar-powered hot air balloon flight over Argentina's Salinas Grandes salt flats. (Ordinary hot air balloons gain altitude by burning propane).

The project, which was backed by Korean pop stars BTS, also drew attention to the region's indigenous communities whose drinking water has been contaminated in the 'green rush' to mine lithium used in rechargeable batteries.

With its geographical reach and radically different media, the exhibition is testament to Saraceno's creative energy and curiosity. Fittingly, he offered, 'the air itself is restless, constantly in motion.' —[O]