SHADOWS
SHADOWS, the monumental work of Carlo De Meo for Chile.
In the north of Chile, in the driest area of the world, nestled between the Atacama Desert and the Pacific Ocean, the “Bienal Saco has invited the” artist Carlo De Meo and the curator Isabella Indolfi for a month-long artistic residency, aimed at creating a massive site-specific installation in the heart of the city of Antofagasta.
The project, which enjoys the support of the IIC Santiago, is the result of a collaboration between the Bienal Saco and the Seminaria Biennale, which have implemented an artistic exchange program coordinated by Marianna Fazzi.
SHADOWS is by far the largest environmental work ever created by Carlo De Meo in his now 40-year artistic career and carries with it all the distinctive traits of his research: the human body (and precisely that of the artist) as a measure of space; writing that, between poetry and wordplay, marks the narrative; the calibrated use of light and shadows to give body to the soul and affirm being; the process of collecting and synthesizing waste materials and objects that compose the work; the anchoring of concept and matter to the place, from which everything is born and acquires meaning; the unfolding of the installation as a story to be traversed.
Inspired by the theme “Dark Ecosystems”, chosen by director Dagmara Wyskiel for the 12th edition of the biennial, the work speaks of darkness and resistance. The title, SHADOWS, comes from a linguistic coincidence between Italian and Spanish, where an ‘h’ transforms the Italian word “ombre” into the Spanish “hombre”, meaning man. A significant coincidence for Carlo De Meo, on which the entire work is based.
The narrative begins with IT WAS NIGHT, IT WAS DARK, A DARKNESS THAT WAS NOT THE NIGHT. The darkness to which the artist refers is an unnatural, social, cultural, intellectual darkness; but also a darkness that protects, like the shadow in the desert, and that allows resistance to flourish.
In the disused industrial complex of the Molinera del Norte in Antofagasta, where once stood the large grain silos, of which today only the circular bases remain, populating an inhospitable asphalt desert of hundreds of square meters, Carlo De Meo recreates an oasis of enchantment and reflection on a human scale, where the public is invited to pause, listen, and question.
Protected by the shadow of a multitude of rain umbrellas (a decidedly exotic object in a region where it never rains), visitors make their way through the story narrated by figures of men that come to life from old doors, objects and waste materials, sculpted and assembled following formal coincidences, conceptual paradoxes and visionary errors. One gets lost in Carlo De Meo’s world made of shapes, volumes, words and sounds, in a tangle of arms, fingers, hands, feet, mouths and everything needed to BE, until one finds oneself with a question: WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER OF YOUR SHADOW?
On display from June 24 to September 14, 2025
Bienal Saco
Molinera del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile
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