Inkjet prints on photopaper, each 40x 59 cm
The work glistening glass shard hill shows a mountain at the edge of a mine in which minerals such as copper, gold, and pyrite are extracted. It is accessible from several sides; at its foot a river flows. Animals step into the river to rid themselves of parasites and fleas. But no animal drinks from it. The mountain is scarcely vegetated and nothing moves upon it. Its ground proves unstable on the ascent; with every step the surface gives way. It is a clattering crunch, knakschcksrrriikkk. Every step sounds different. In between, islands. At times a car tyre, bricks, plastic chairs, or a mattress. Narrow paths wind up the mountain in serpentines, marked with signs for hikers that promise orientation.
Glass vessels of all kinds, mixed with other objects once in use and now lying at the river’s edge, form the glass shard hill. They were brought by car from the surrounding area and thrown down the slope. Like on conveyor belts in mines.
Through their colouring, almost burnt in appearance, the glass shards take on a metallic quality. Bacteria living in the river metabolise the sulfide minerals contained in the pyrite and produce iron ions and sulfuric acid, staining the shards, the river, and its surroundings.
The notion of nature blurs in this place, where bacterial processes in the river interpenetrate indistinguishably with human waste deposits, with the properties of the rock, forming a mountain. Walking upon it invites a questioning of the surrounding landscape and directs the gaze toward what becomes sediment and future fossils. Toward what forms at the margins of narratives and continues to live in its own obstinate way despite the harsh conditions of extractivism.
Paula Maria del Mar Repp Alvarez (*1999, Munich) lives and works in Halle (Saale) and Munich. She is a trained silversmith and has been studying at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle with Prof. Yuka Oyama since 2022. In 2026, she was a guest student at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in the photography class of Prof. Armin Linke as well as in 2025 at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Media Art with Prof. Susanne Kriemann. In her artistic practice, she works from the material outward, using sculpture, photography, and text, with a focus on extraction and post-extraction landscapes. Her works have been shown in several group and solo exhibitions in Germany and Belgium.