DAMASCO PRATEADO [2020]
LIVENSA LIVING LISBOA CIDADE UNIVERSITÁRIA [Lisbon, Portugal]
A commissioned urban art project by the SONAE SIERRA Public Art Program for the Livensa Living Lisboa Cidade Universitária a Temprano Capital Partners building
ANA VELEZ - JOANA GOMES - MARIA SASSETTI - XANA SOUSA
A commissioned urban art project by the SONAE SIERRA Public Art Program for the Livensa Living Lisboa Cidade Universitária a Temprano Capital Partners building, consisting of 105 aluminum sheets with different cuts as well as 8 neon lights, referencing different shapes of the gingko biloba leaves and petals.
As a whole, the tree presents the colors green, yellow, red and gray, shades associated, in particular, with soil fertility, youth, strength, life, warmth, nature, joy and hope. Similar to our installation created on the facades of Pensão Amor [Lisbon, Portugal], Mamba-de-Jameson, here we created an organic stain on the front facade of the building in an upward direction, harmoniously distributing the shapes of the leaves and petals of the ginkgo biloba. Each artist worked on a specific leaf shape with different dimensions and quantities. The piece also has neon lights in a luminous silhouette that guide the installation at night. The neon leaves, spread across the facade, appear as points of lighting mapping the “tree” and the nighttime path back to the residence, like a lighthouse. Among aluminum sheets with more detailed work created by the artists, in accordance with the techniques they master, monochromatic aluminum sheets appear that form the connection between the rest.
The intervention has a three-dimensional reading due to the distance of the aluminum sheets from the wall, each set by each artist has a different distance.
Ginkgo Biloba, translated as Damasco Prateado, is a tree of Chinese origin and is considered a living fossil due to its longevity, having existed since the era of the dinosaurs, that is, more than 200 million years ago. A tree that, from generation to generation, has seen time, history and the metamorphosis of the world pass by. It is also symbolically associated with peace and perseverance due to the fact that it survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima [Japan] in the Second World War. Its leaves are used to combat free radicals and as an aid to brain oxygenation. They are deciduous trees, that is, they lose all their leaves in the Winter. They reach a height of 20 to 35 meters [some specimens, in China, reach 50 meters].
Ginkgo is believed to be a nootropic, being used mainly as a memory and attention enhancer.
These centuries-old trees have male and female flowers, so that in some trees there are male flowers and in others there are female flowers. The male flowers sprout next to the leaves, have a yellowish hue and hang in compact groups. On the other hand, the females appear alone, are located at the tip of a long stem and at the end of the Summer they swell and produce the fruit.
Atelier Contencioso
