I remember the first time someone tried to sell me on the romance of lost civilisations. It usually involves Atlantis or some other convenient myth that lets the teller rewrite the map to suit their mood. So when word came round that the ICA had opened a show built around a volcanic island that appeared between Sicily and Tunisia in 1831, only to vanish six months later, I half expected another helping of fashionable fog. Turns out Elisa Giardina Papa has done something rather more grounded.
She Flickered In and Out of History opened yesterday at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and runs until 6 September. The centrepiece is an 18-minute video on a large free-standing LED screen, flanked by hand-shaped glass sculptures, photographs and bits of cotisso, that rough volcanic rock the locals know too well. No misty theorising about decolonising the waves. Instead the work tracks the hard geological, mythological and political facts of the affair: an underwater eruption creates dry land, Britain, France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies immediately start arguing over who owns it, then the sea takes it back. History as slapstick with real consequences.
The piece includes a poem spoken in Sicilian, set to an original score by duendita. That choice feels telling. Sicilian isn't some trendy linguistic prop; it's the living remnant of the very cultures that watched this temporary kingdom rise and fall. Giardina Papa, born in Italy, MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, PhD from Berkeley, now splitting her time between New York and Sant'Ignazio in Sicily, clearly knows the difference between visiting a place and belonging to its memory.
The exhibition design comes from the studio 2050+, and the whole thing is supported by the Christian Levett Collection, Musée FAMM Mougins, the Italian Council programme and the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Solid backers, which probably explains why the work doesn't collapse into slogan art. There's an artist talk today with Erika Balsom, moderated by Andrea Nitsche-Krupp, if you fancy hearing the creator explain her method without the gallery gloss.
What lingers is the sheer daftness of human claims on shifting ground. One minute you've got three powers planting flags on a smoking lump of lava; the next it's underwater again and the treaties are worthless. Giardina Papa doesn't lecture. She simply lays out the evidence in video, sculpture and sound, and lets the absurdity speak. In an age when every patch of dirt seems to generate fresh declarations of ownership, the story of Ferdinandea or Graham Island or Julia, take your pick of colonial names, feels less like ancient curiosity and more like a cautionary tale delivered by the Mediterranean itself.
Plenty of contemporary art chases relevance by shouting about borders and power. This show reminds us that the earth has been redrawing its own borders long before any of us turned up with our maps and manifestos. Sometimes the most radical act is paying proper attention to what actually happened.
