Ivory Towers ︎Recent Projects


Turris Eburnea I, 2019

Turris Eburnea I, 2019


The Series 'Ivory Towers’, (2019), is ascribed to my recent research framed in the context of the relationship of humans with nature. In this sculptural production, the natural environment is the central protagonist, in the development of historical and contemporary narratives where current social and political concerns related to environmental justice, climate change and sustainability are addressed.

Faced with the obvious destruction of Nature, new forms of resistance appear in which humans and non-humans are involved. The land we inhabit is no longer just an asset to be preserved, but a setting to learn and deploy a new bonding intelligence.

As long as we continue to see Nature as that other place in the world that is outside the cities and ourselves, we will not be able to understand what is happening with the devastation of our natural forests, the floods that give us back the water that the soils monocultures can no longer absorb, drought and the new deserts, human, animal and plant genetic mutations, among other contemporary issues.

I consider that art, as never before, has a decisive role in this awareness and a leading role in this epistemological turn. Art can generate sensitive correlates, expand our human limits in the capacity to feel and love and challenge ourselves from another place.

'Ivory Towers' investigates the mythologies of exoticism during the centuries of exploration of America and Asia, fragments of history when the scope of collecting is expanded to all kinds of admirable, rare and valuable objects in a context of geographical usurpation, but also reflection on the natural environment from a romantic and humanistic perspective.

In the seventeenth century, strange pieces in the form of turned ivory goblets arrived from Coburg at the hands of the Medici in Florence - as part of a war booty. At first glance, the pieces captivated with their beauty, but immediately behind their magnetism the bloody annihilation of elephants, necessary to build these works, appears only to the delight of the Duke and some courtiers.

‘Ivory Towers’ is dedicated to the memory of a very brief cut in the history of mankind, but as an example of human's behavior with respect to nature over the centuries, it is enough.

These pieces inspired by those Turris Eburnea were made by hand with threads of polylactic acid (PLA), a totally biodegradable material, extracted from the fermentation of sugar cane and sugar beet.




Ivory Towers, 2019
Sculptures developed with threads of polylactic acid (PLA)
Dimensions Variable

©Laura Messing 2023