Schlak was the latest chapter in Giuseppe Licari's research into the relationship between man and nature. In one of the most important mining areas of the European steel industry, he collected, as a geologist, the rocks that remain as a residual product after the iron has been smelted at 1535˚C. Licari showed his collection of slag stone in combination with images that make tangible how a whole new layer of earth has been created as a result of human action.
Giuseppe Licari (Erice, Sicily, 1980) presented his slag stone collection as a contemporary mineralogical cabinet of the Anthropocene. He extracted pigments from the slag stone, just as artists used to extract pigments from precious stones. He also took photographs of the post-industrial landscape that, with its strange colours and hills up to 50 metres high, both disturbs and fascinates.
Landscape images and mineralogical collections once helped to shape an image of nature as a goldmine of products and raw materials, and fed the idea that these should be exploited naturally. Licari's photographs and mineralogical cabinet hark back to that history, and depict the world that emerged from it and is now our legacy. His slag stone collection reads as a geological archive, testifying to the economic and social processes that have shaped the contemporary landscape. But it also raises questions: What kind of living environment does our man-made nature shape for the future?
Legacies of the steel industry
Giuseppe Licari develops projects around industrial and natural heritage, often working on location. He created Schlak during a residency in a former mining area in Belval, Luxembourg. But the steel industry, which was a crucial factor in the growth of the global economy, has left its mark everywhere. Controversial steel slag is also used in the Netherlands, including in the construction of dikes. We have become so accustomed to landscapes made of industrial waste material that we usually don't even notice it.
With thanks to Public Art Experience – BeHave by Le Fonds Belval, Belval, Luxembourg.