Smout Allen

Maxime Willing Y5

Disjecta Membra. Italy has the largest number of UNESCO Heritage sites in the world, but with the wider economic issues afflicting the country and most particularly the region of Sicily, there is a growing concern that this heritage will crumble to dust. 

The project considers the resolution of this issue through the application of a 19th century form of education; the production of cast replicas of historical artefacts and fragments for exhibition. A landscape of copies that develop their own history, becoming a record of an original that will only ever degrade further.

Disjecta Membra, a landscape of disparate parts, reawakens the Latomie dei Paradiso, one of the great, ancient limestone quarries that gird the historic city of Syracuse in Sicily, and left to nature since the earthquakes of 1693. Within the quarries used in the second world war to protect local treasures, and using both traditional and modern fabrication techniques, the project aims to preserve Sicily’s heritage. Gathering it all in a more manageable location, with copies being distributed to collections world wide to raise awareness of the particular issues facing the island. 

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