Jan Fabre

Homo aquaticus and his planet

July 7 — September 30, 2022

Certosa di San Giacomo, Capri

The project, curated by Melania Rossi, consists of 16 sculptures in white Carrara marble and black Belgian marble that the artist has been working on for the last four years. The works are inspired by the relationship between man and the mysterious marine abysses and by water as a vital and primordial element.

Two figures in diving suits allude to the human desire for knowledge and to the propensity to "plunge into the unknown" which has always propelled us towards the exploration of unknown worlds. In a sort of “free diving” into his imagination, Jan Fabre brings to the surface curious hybrid beings with fish-like bodies and detailed realistic human faces lying on brains.

The protagonist of this installation is precisely the organ of thought which the two divers seem to have just brought to the surface from the depths of the sea. For more than two decades Fabre has been engaged in research on the human brain, with expert scientists in biology and neuroscience and has incorporated his research into his artistic universe (drawings, sculptures and film-performances).

Homo aquaticus resumes the vision of the great French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau who had imagined a voluntary evolution of man towards life under water, partly through natural adaptation and partly through the use of technology. Inspired by studies on "Human fish", Fabre tries to imagine the missing link in the evolution of man from the sea to life on earth, creating new metamorphoses from man to fish and vice versa.

In the island’s oldest monastery, a spiritual site immersed in a natural setting of light and water, marked by a powerful sense of the cosmic, Jan Fabre’s installation reminds us that, ultimately, a person swimming underwater returns in some manner to his point of departure, where the source of life began and continues to regenerate.