North Macedonia (Republic of)

The installation questions the boundaries of the human, thinking beyond them, and creating new ethical sensibilities. It wraps Michelangelo’s Pietà in gold emergency blankets, reclothing it to generate new meanings. Emergency becomes the catalyst of change. Attention is no longer directed toward the human figure but extends to fragile relations, uncertain futures, and shared conditions of exposure. From beneath the reflecting folds of the blankets, the figures appear and disappear, suggesting a protean transformation. Mourning is not an endpoint but a generative process that can give rise to new forms of relation and responsibility.

Originally created for space missions, emergency blankets are now visual markers of the victims of global inequalities, wars and conflicts, and destroyed environments. The sculpture transforms contemplation into a mode of ethical response, forging associations with the various crises we are living through. The emergency blankets connect the viewer with those who are living through urgent conditions, providing a platform for their experiences of exile, lost homes, broken relationships, trauma, and death. Gold envelops the figures in today’s affective realm of emotions, passions and suffering. Monumentality gives way to provisionality, echoing a world in which stability and belonging are increasingly fragile.