Earth Cinema is a 45m long deep cut into the landscape, where people can enter from both sides. Inside, a long opening enables the visitors to “view” the landscape and feel as a part of it.
It is a 7m wide opening at the bottom: Kapoor invites visitors to rediscover the sound, the echo of the Mother Earth, and to find a picture onto the screen, at the centre of the side where no moving figures appear, except for reflection and shadows of the overlying vegetation.
The work is a new artistic point of view on the area, inviting the viewer to observe it from the inside. “It is a work with architectural scale and requires a kind of physical response, it is not made only to be looked at but it is an actual experience to live … The idea is the inside of the earth, a cave… somehow you know that is not a natural cave but some kind of man-made cavity … there is a dialogue between culture and nature”.
Born in Bombay in 1954, to Indian father and Iraqui-Jewish mother, Anish Kapoor has lived and worked in London, where he had moved for study reasons, since the early-1970s. Key figure in the landscape of contemporary art, he has exhibited his works in the most important museums of the world; his works form part of international private and public collections. Kapoor’s investigation focuses on the dialectic of opposites and the use of colour, in its purity, which is also a constant feature of his artworks and symbol of the synthesis of the Eastern and Western worlds. 1979 is a decisive year in his artistic career. Once back to India, Kapoor rediscovers his origins and realises that his life happens on a thin border line between east and west. Back to England, he creates the 1000 Names series.
In 1980 he holds his first personal exhibition in Paris, at Patrice Alexandre’s studio. In 1981 he exhibits in London, at Coracle Press. In the same year, he starts collaborating with Nicholas Logsdail, owner of the Lisson Gallery in London.
Soon he takes a leading role in the New British Sculpture, with artists such as Cragg, Deacon, Woodrow and Gormley. In this period, his research mostly focuses on the use of colours, which give to his artworks a polished surface quality. “The skin, the external surface, has always been to me the place of action. It’s the moment of contact between an object and the world. The film that separates the inside from the outside” In 1990 he represents Great Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale, and he is awarded the Premio 2000 Prize. In 1992, he is honoured with the Turner Prize and again the Premio 2000 Prize at the 45th Venice Biennale.
He holds exhibitions throughout the world, accepting both public and private commissions. His artworks are displayed in the most important museums of the world: the Tate Modern in London, the MOMA in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Kunsthalle Basel Museum in Basel, and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam.
The association was created in February 2008 with the aim of promoting the cultural growth of the territory of the Pollino National Park.
