Every Thing Eats Light by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a large-scale stained glass artwork commissioned for the 2024 Manifesta 15 biennial in Barcelona. Installed at The Three Chimneys, a former power station, the piece explores the interconnectedness of life and light. Ginsberg’s artwork is inspired by Proterocladus antiquus, a billion-year-old seaweed fossil, which represents one of the earliest organisms capable of photosynthesis and considered the sister of the great, great-grandmother of all green plants alive today.
The stained glass reflects the fundamental ecological process where plants capture sunlight to sustain life on Earth, forming the basis of all food chains. Through this artwork, Ginsberg aims to prompt viewers to rethink humanity's relationship with nature, especially in the context of modern ecological crises. Positioned in a space symbolic of industrial energy consumption, Every Thing Eats Light also serves as an interrogation of humanity’s attempts to separate itself from nature, embodied by the power plant’s role in fossil fuel consumption.
“As the plants’ shadows track across the floor with the sun’s path, the window is a memorial for the building’s troubled environmental and social history, for the present need for humans to see ourselves differently amidst ecological crises, and for a different future - one that we have failed to create” AlexandraDaisyGinsberg.com
The work is located at The Three Chimneys as part of the 'Imagining Futures' section of the 2024 edition of the nomadic biennial.
Photo © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd.
