Monique Bastiaans presents "The Sixth Silence" at cisma.art, Valencia
January 23, 2025
cisma (Valencia) presents a unique experience on Sunday 26 January from 12.00h.
‘The Sixth Silence’, a work by our collaborating artist Monique Bastiaans which, as part of the Reflective Realms initiative, is linked to the glass cube as a space for reflection on our disconnection with biodiversity. This private activity will take place in a natural environment and proposes an intimate encounter with art, nature and sustainability.
Monique Bastiaans is a renowned Dutch artist with an extensive career that has positioned her as an international reference in the field of art installations. Her work is characterized by a profound connection with nature and a strong commitment to sustainability, transforming her proposals into spaces for reflection on the relationship between humans and their environment.
Throughout her career, Monique Bastiaans has developed a unique visual language in which organic and recycled materials take center stage. These materials are transformed into installations that engage with their surroundings and question society’s disconnection from biodiversity. Her projects, always imbued with sensitivity and symbolism, invite us to revalue the greatness of small things, highlighting the urgency of reconsidering our coexistence with the natural world.
Recognized internationally for the poetic and ethical dimensions of her work, Monique Bastiaans is an essential figure in contemporary art, capable of articulating beauty, critique, and sustainability in each of her creations. In proposals such as 'The Sixth Silence', she not only addresses the global ecological crisis but also opens a space to imagine futures more respectful and harmonious with the planet.
On the other hand, Reflective Realms, a proposal by cisma.art, shares with 'The Sixth Silence' the challenge of dislocating art and proposing an experience outside traditional spaces. Under the glass of the minimalist cube that constitutes Reflective Realms, the echo of fragility evoked by 'The Sixth Silence' resonates. This work directly references the sixth mass extinction on the planet, a phenomenon that underscores the drastic loss of biodiversity and our disconnection from nature. Although distinct in their conception, both projects converge on a key point: reflecting on our relationship with the natural environment and the spaces we inhabit.
“The field glimmered beneath the quiver of the breeze” Juan Ramón Jiménez
This verse bridges the serene beauty of the environment and the fragility evoked by the vegetal remnants in Monique’s work. Both are situated in spaces of introspection: the cube as a conceptual mirror and the organic materials as vestiges confronting us with the consequences of our actions.
In Reflective Realms, the cube not only reflects the landscape but transforms it into an active participant in the artistic process. Similarly, 'The Sixth Silence' uses vegetal remnants to make visible the disconnection between humans and the ecosystem upon which we depend. This gesture underscores how the small and seemingly insignificant —the diversity of a plant, the trembling of a leaf— can contain an immensity of meanings. Both invite us to think of art not as something confined by walls or institutions, but as a subjective and deeply personal experience that connects the visible with the invisible, the material with the intangible.
The tension between visibility and invisibility, so present in the glass cube, is also found in 'The Sixth Silence', where what is absent —the lost biodiversity, the eroded respect— assumes a powerful presence. Both works become metaphors for our minds and our perception: transparent and complex spaces where imagination and reality converge. Ultimately, they invite us to rethink our attitudes toward the environment.
If diversity is nature’s greatest virtue, as 'The Sixth Silence' suggests, the cube must become an emblem of that diversity, reflecting a world as vast as the possibilities of our imagination. We must reconcile ourselves with natural balance, not as mere spectators but as active participants in a system of which we have always been a part.
Toni Calderón. Historian and Art Critic