Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan

Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan presented Blue Ground (2021), a double screen video installation which interconnected a number of distinct geographies and industries that share a common mineral: the diamond. From offshore diamond mining in Romania, to the environmental ‘scars’ from the diamond extraction in the Namib desert, through to industrial diamond manufacture in the Shannon region. In Blue Ground, the diamond comes to represent a symbolic frontier of human and technological relations to the landscape.

Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan’s participation formed part of the 39th EVA International Partnership Projects.  

Biography 

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan are collaborators based in Bucharest, who have worked together since 2011. Their work in installation, video, and performance uses research-based methods to reveal the invisible patterns behind certain historical, social, or geopolitical narratives. Their recent work investigates the phenomenon of man-made landscapes around the world, where the making and marking of landscape as a form of spatial modification goes hand in hand with heightened state violence and the overexploitation of resources. Recent exhibitions include: Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseille (2019) and Metropolitan Art Centre, Belfast (2018).