Copper Stencil, Copper bar and rotten wood

Cross

Text by Tiago Casanova

The cross (from the Latin word crucis) is one of the oldest human and esoteric symbols and is used by different religions and faiths. A geometric figure formed by two lines that intersect at a right angle, the cross is the repository of a vast symbology.

This sculptural installation uses diverse metaphors to explore this symbology, namely the relationship of opposites (verticality/horizontality), which according to popular and religious culture can have several meanings: male/female; positive/negative; superior/inferior; time/space; active/passive; Sun/Moon; life/death; spirit/matter; etc. Here, the use of materials with opposite values, old wood and copper, intends to create a parallelism between the relationship between horizontality (earth/human/habitat) and verticality (god/divine/faith).

The old, rotten wood reflects on our human condition, repeatedly mistreated by natural, economic, social and martial catastrophes that create a state and feeling of injustice that we struggle to justify, even if we rely on faith on one or several gods. Before its transformation, wood was part of an essential living being, a key contributor to the production of the oxygen we breathe. However, it is also an important basic material for the construction and development of the tools that made possible human evolution. Here, it is represented in the final stage of its life, degrading and fading away. This is our condition as fragile beings, living and dying.

Copper, the metallic material believed to have been the first to be mined and worked by humankind several millennia ago, is used as a symbol of our scientific and creative capacity. Used as a conductor to feed electricity into our homes, copper can be compared to the Sun, that was also worshiped by different ancient cultures. Here, copper stands to signal the vertical relationship between the Human and the Divine, because it is a fairly expensive material, comparable to gold and silver – the metals most commonly used by the Church for the worship of the Lord. This is not only a criticism of the Church’s ostentatious decorative practices in a world with so much poverty, but also a personal conclusion: in faith, whatever the faith, what matters are the actions, the intentions and the thoughts, not the tool, the symbol or the commercial value of any given material. This is also a criticism of the thieving Human and of a system that forces humans to steal. It is a criticism of the abuse of natural resources, of financial and commercial systems that have long abandoned simple trade in favour of speculation. It is a criticism of the Copper Gang that steals this metal and – albeit symbolically – the energy we associate to the Sun god that gives us life. It is a criticism of all of us who, one way or the other, are part of a social, economic and religious system that is much like the Copper Gang.

This installation was created for the Cloister of the Monastery of Grijó.

Translated by José Roseira