According to the organisers, the exhibition is considered an “artistic intervention”, attracting visitors to an artistic exploration of “salt, geology, and the human relationship with the natural and technical environment”. The rock salt mine stretches for approximately 45km, and each artist is assigned a unique chamber within the underground network.

Natalia Loyola has commented that her art will have visitors “explore the field of sound ecologies” through “installations that transform the tactile into sound experiences”. It will examine the “tenuous relationship between artificial and natural, between language, spatiality and geology, by integrating technological elements to create immersive sound environments that invite reflection on the narratives of Capitalocene.”

Victor Gonçalves is the author of two installations, titled “Evento Sentinela” and “Situação-Salobra”, both of which explore the relationship between time and matter. The first contain “more than 1,300 paper boats”, which were all made from the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) of the Brazilian Senate, regarding the environmental crimes that took place in the Maceió rock salt. In the second piece, the author combines the sound and tactile senses, inviting the visitors to focus on the fragility of the medium and the “tension between the artificial and the natural” as they stand before a block of salt.

The third artist, Maura Grimaldi, will be displaying an immersion of images in search of the “relationship between the cinema experience and the underground world of mine gallery”. Her goal is to provide the “sublime and astonishing” ambiance of the mines, being conscious about the immense work and equipment required for the mines, whilst simultaneously offering the resources to intervene the landscape in an “irreversible way”, according to the artist.

The artists stated that they were inspired by the grandeur of the mines, how descending 230 metres underground influences all your senses. It is a place where “the human actions and geology meet in an aggressive and poetic way”, said Victor Gonçalves.

This initiative is being promoted by the Associação Alfaia and the Festival Verão Azul, with the support of the Direção-Geral das Artes.