Didier Fiúza Faustino’s project is situated at the intersection between art and architecture: cruciform camp beds (Rest in Piece) in the outdoor area and a passageway comprising sewn-together airline blankets (Global Warming) inside Haus Lange add up to form the artist’s site-specific installation. The objects make the impression of improvised architecture whose supporting structure can be rapidly assembled and dismantled in order to be transferred to different locations.

As is reflected in the installation’s forms and materials, the camp beds and airline blankets are not conceived with permanency or individualized use in mind but rather functional practicability. The pieces transport notions of flexibility and mobility that symbolically represent diverse demands made on life and living in today’s society. Faustino reflects a paradoxical moment of mobility in Global Warming and Rest in Piece. While globalization and digitalization demand constant maneuverability, people are also involuntarily forced to be flexible and mobile because of global warming and political circumstances. Didier Fiúza Faustino’s work is located at the threshold between mobility as a requirement and mobility as an inevitability. The perspective of inevitability is shaped by the allusion to the now highly topical refugee thematic.

An awareness of the fact that climate change is a major cause of flight in many countries has not sufficiently impressed itself upon the responsible industrial nations. Mobility is called for in a globalized society and consequently contributes to global warming. Basic human needs like water, food and grazing land are becoming increasingly rare resources, forcing people to turn to mobile drafts for life and living. Mobility is inevitable here.

According to a current ZEIT Online article, over 23 million people flew domestic routes in Germany in 2018 (Weßling: “Wer noch ins Flugzeug steigt, ist ein Klimasünder,” May 5, 2019). The question must be posed here, whether excessive flying is a symptom of a globalized society that comprehends mobility as a requirement. These opposing perspectives and questions echo in Didier Fiúza Faustino’s Global Warming. The critical appealing interpretation is only one of many that the installation triggers. A colorful collaged composition consisting of blankets from international airlines is positioned as a passageway inside Haus Lange. A reading of Faustino’s installation begins with residential prototypes and forges a bridge to current societal questions. The installation redresses the threshold between architecture and garden, reinforcing the dialogue between the interior and exterior intended by Mies van der Rohe.

Didier Fiúza Faustino (Born 1968 in Chennevières-sur-Marne, FR) is an architect and artist who works at the interface between body and space. He began his interdisciplinary artistic activities immediately after completing study of architecture in 1995. He has since then developed multifaceted approaches that open up a spectrum of installations, experiments and works of fine art up to an including the design of multi-sensory spaces and mobile architecture. After six years of teaching in London and two years as working as editor-in-chief of international architecture and design magazines, Faustino now devotes himself as a freelance artist to his projects around the world.

Julia Reich