METEOR, Chiostro del Bramante, Rome

It is as if we have seen this place hundreds of times. The green tinge recalls those walls at which we stared blankly, daydreaming through our sometimes-stifling everyday lives. They are the green walls of the classroom where the hours ticked past so slowly, of the waiting room, of the public office where we wait our turn in an endless line. Yet this ostensibly anonymous and impersonal place also offers some escape vents. In what is tantamount to an act of revolt against the inertia of the unchanging schedules and rhythms of everyday life, this work invites us to lift our eyes and gaze beyond the ceiling, beyond the smooth plane of existence. 

Meteor is a site-specific installation created by British artist Anne Hardy for the exhibition ‘Crazy. Madness in contemporary art”. The mirrored surface of the installation captures reflections of openings in the ceiling through which we can peer into the artists inner world and see ourselves reflected in the work, which strips our everyday world of its facades. Seeds that fall like meteors, unwitting carriers of corpuscles of life, that like ideas are germinated in the secret garden that lies shrouded in the cloak of everyday life.  

The sound and light in the room, creates a distinct but intangible atmosphere as it fluctuates, referencing collective experiences of the Covid 19 lockdowns – the sound of empty office buildings, the static sound of data transmission and mobile signals – the brightness of the lights changing in a rhythm programmed by open-source data recording activity levels in the city since the start of the pandemic.