Wood, Resin, Toxic-Free Sand, LED
25 x 17 x 10 cm
Malaga, Spain
The series draws from Lisa Li's childhood experience of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. With little warning, her family was evacuated, and the landscape she knew was transformed. One memory remains particularly vivid: sitting at the dining table eating lunch in near-total darkness. Volcanic ash had obscured the sun, turning day into night and disrupting her familiar sense of time.
One of the largest volcanic eruptions of the twentieth century, Mount Pinatubo altered the surrounding landscape and affected global temperatures for years afterward. What remained was not simply destruction, but a landscape undergoing transformation. The experience shaped Li's interest in the relationship between destruction and creation, and how forces beyond human control can fundamentally alter our understanding of permanence.
The sculptures translate these ideas into a physical encounter. Translucent resin forms rest within a landscape of sand and stone, illuminated from below. As visitors move and reposition the pieces, they interrupt the light, disturb the terrain, and establish new arrangements. Each movement simultaneously dismantles an existing composition and creates another.
Rather than presenting destruction and creation as opposing forces, the work considers them as interconnected processes, inviting viewers to participate in the continual transformation of the installation.