15/05/2026
From the Muzeum Susch Archive 📁🗄️
Behind the Scenes of Adrián Villar Rojas, From the Series “The Theater of Disappearance ###I”, 2018
Housed in the oldest part of Muzeum Susch, is an immersive artwork exploring the intersections of time, materiality, and human impact on the Earth. Resting on a vivid blue concrete platform, a stratified, totem-like column rises, constructed from a fusion of organic and synthetic materials. The column is encrusted with elements such as sea shells, animal bones, seeds, and industrial debris, creating a hybrid sculpture that evokes both the distant past and speculative futures. Villar Rojas draws on local contexts, merging geological, biological, and urban traces to confront viewers with the impermanence of human existence within the broader context of the Anthropocene. His work blurs boundaries between ephemerality and permanence, urging reflection on humanity’s destructive impact on the planet while suggesting the necessity of transformation for survival.
The artwork’s deep engagement with both local and global materials reflects Villar Rojas’s meticulous process of gathering and manipulating objects that embody specific cultural, ecological, and historical narratives. By layering these elements, he creates a temporal ambiguity that invites viewers to ponder the intertwined fates of natural and man-made environments. The installation’s intense blue platform, reminiscent of chroma key blue used in film production, adds a digital, otherworldly dimension to the work, suggesting the blending of virtual and physical realities. This visual language not only bridges past and future but also critiques contemporary systems of power, drawing attention to humanity’s unsustainable dominance over the Earth. In this way, Villar Rojas’s work becomes both a memorial to a world in flux and a call to reimagine our relationship with nature and technology before it’s too late
Photos:
1-9: Muzeum Susch, 2018, Private Archive
10: © Muzeum Susch / Art Stations Foundation CH & Studio Stefano Graziani
