CARTOGRAPHY OF HELL (2018)
digital print, 1-9
30 x 40 cm
The mapping of Hell – Dante’s Inferno – proved to be a recurring motive in Renaissance science and visuality, based on the calculations of Antonio Manetti. Even Galilei strove to justify the endeavour in lectures.
Mine pits bear clear formal resemblance to these terraced, funnel-shaped representations of Hell and the Commedia can also be read from an ecological perspective: the nine circles is a landscape of toxic, sulphuric gases, contaminated, acidic mine drainages and devastated forests. The Jerusalem of the engravings, protecting the entrance of Hell, is today replaced by other locations where the punishment of a given circle is enacted.