All posts tagged: Gola Hundun

Gola Hundun Goes to the Root of Our Matter

November 17, 2021 Artists

Street art naturalist, educator, and land artist Gola Hundun is setting new goals for himself and evolving yet again, this time examining out roots. His one month residency in Kufa in Esch (Luxembourg ) resulted in many large iron and wicker roots poking up through the ground, pushing back into the skin of the city.

Gola Hundun. Art Residency at Kufa. Esch, Luxembourg. (photo © Gilles Kayser)

The installation group, “is part of my research path called ‘Habitat’,” he explains, “a project that started with the abandoned buildings that were being recolonized by the rest of nature. Now I am approaching living cities, with nature taking back some of their space.”

Working 11 hour days with 4 assistants, Hundun created new sculptures to organically weave themselves into the city and into this cultural centre called Kulturfabrik Esch-sur-Alzette (KuFa), located in a former slaughterhouse in the city of Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg. Their own version of a street art festival encourages artists to think outside the established perimeters of publicly created artworks when necessary, utilizing the program and their work as a platform for sustainable development. The energizing Hudun is the perfect foil of such a challenge.

“Inside each root, there is a plant pot in which ivy plants will grow on the wicker structure,” he tells us, “and through time they will symbolize the flag of our ideal.”

The installations are around town, hopefully opening minds and stimulating conversation – each a group of sculptures to be installed in the train station of Esch sur Alzette.

To avoid any misunderstanding of his intended meaning, Gola Hundun has created a long title for the program: “Economic power must redefine its parasitic position about the world. We need to become a choral system of small self-sufficient centers that collaborate as the roots of a tree contribute to shape a trunk. Respect for other forms of life! Superior Love or extinction now!”

———

Gola Hundun. Installation at Esch sur Alzette. Art Residency at Kufa. Esch, Luxembourg. (photo © Gilles Kayser)

The artist would like to thank @ciglesch, the partner in production and logistic with Kufa and @villeesch, CFL – “and all the magical lovely people that made it possible”.

Golden Rivers from Gola Hundun Mark Landslides in Stigliano, Italy

September 13, 2021 Artists

A Land Art Installation Dedicated to the Dichotomous Power of Water.

Here in Stigliano, Italy, the area and the people have been seriously impacted, often in negative ways, by several landslides over the last 50 years – including the second largest canyon landslide in Europe in 2014. Events like these can cause casualties, heartbreak, property damage, and severe economic loss.

A new golden installation by street artist/land artist Gola Hundun studies the natural flow and recreates it – drawing attention to the role of water, rains, and the hand of man diverting and distorting natural systems.

Gola Hundun. *“KINTSUGI”*. In collaboration with AppARTEngo Festival 2021. Stigliano, Italy. (photo © Chiara Ventola)

According to the Natural Hazards and Earth Systems Sciences newsletter, “In Italy, landslides are caused primarily by rainfall. Depending on meteorological and physiographical conditions, individual rainfall events can cause slope failures in areas of limited extent or in large regions.”

As is common for Hundun’s artworks and installations, this one looks at the relationship of conflict between humans and the planet – as well as the dichotomy of water; giving us life and being an enormous destructive force at the same time.

Gola Hundun. *“KINTSUGI”*. In collaboration with AppARTEngo Festival 2021. Stigliano, Italy. (photo © Italo Massari)

Hundun tells us that this new work attempts to reconcile the life-giving and the life-destroying qualities of water. Referring to a Japanese tradition called Kintsugi, he says, this work “sublimates the fracture and highlights the element of reconciliation.”

“Kintsugi consists of 480 square meters of golden satin, sewn by the seamstresses of Stigliano following the artist’s instructions, which recall the shape of a stream of a river that stands out inside the canyon and creeps up to the ruins of the architectural structure most affected by the landslide, emblem of the hand of man forcibly inserted into the natural context.”

GOLA HUNDUN
“KINTSUGI”
Gola Hundun at AppARTEngo Festival 2021
Stigliano (IT)

Gola Hundun, Anthropic Space, Natural Space, and His Newest Installation in Milan

July 26, 2021 Artists

Italian land artist/street muralist Gola Hundun has divided his creative projects in the last few years into two distinct but related practices.

Gola Hundun. “Convective Motions”. Inneschi Festival. Milano, Italy. (photo © Johanna Invrea)

The first is to investigate buildings that are being reclaimed by nature and develop site-specific installations that work in harmony with the history of the relationship between architecture and nature. The second, of which we have an example for you today, is a mural installation on active buildings within cities, perhaps invoking a more integrated ecology of symbols and natural systems around it. These two lines of inquiry comprise his project “HABITAT”, a sincere stream of research that lies on the border between anthropic space and natural space

Here in Milan, the school façade will now display Gola’s dedication to life and its movements – called “Convective Motions”. While the mural composition begins from a central element of cosmic energy, a solar force that unravels centrifugally outward, he also has plans to do plantings around the mural and the property in September to extend the reach of the painted portion of his installation.

“Leaves are painted as if they were part of a fire explosion, following and growing the movement,” he tells us, “generates new ones – involving celestial bodies upon contiguous facades, symbolically returning toward the central sun in a perpetual cyclical movement.”

When completed and grown, Mr. Hundun says the entire composition will include endemic plants grass, bushes, hornbeam trees, dogwood trees, hazel trees, hawthorns, and an English oak placed on an axis with the tree painted on the wall.

“The idea is to create a simulacrum of the wood that is used to dress this municipality of Vimodrone – all spread before the building,” he says. “The tree of life here is the same kind you’ll find monotheistic or pagan religions. The two trees will be set in two movements: the painted one will be crystallized, whereas the real tree will grow inexorably.”

This project is organized by industri scenica – INNESCHI festival in partnership with VIMODRONE City Hall sustained by Fondazione di Comunità Milano Onlus
Consultancy about nests by LIPU MILANO
Pics iranacredi

Gola Hundun: Our Reckless Actions and Their Effects in Italy

January 12, 2021 Artists

“The artwork invites us to think about the lack of empathy we demonstrate towards the rest of the species and to the action/reaction process that ensues”, says street artist and muralist Gola Hundun. An environmentalist at heart and scientific lover of nature, the artist has painted this interesting ocean-themed mural in his hometown of Bellaria-Igea Marina in Italy this month as a way to focus on the bleaching of coral and the damage that the tourism industry can do to our natural treasures.

Gola Hundun. *“Reckless actions effects”*. Bellaria-Igea Marina, Italy. (photo © Johanna Invrea)

Mimicking the subtle changes of our developmental practices on the ocean and its species, Gola’s façade presents a scene that becomes less and less visible as it reaches the completely white corner of the wall. “The white space symbolizes means the absence,” he tells us, “the emptiness, the loss of the ecosystem that is caused by men.”

Gola Hundun: “Habitat” Series Uses Leaves and Natural Print Aesthetics

September 8, 2020 Artists

As summer sun wanes in the Northern Hemisphere, we are again reminded of our dependence upon nature, the print it leaves upon us.

Gola Hundun. *Habitat*. (photo courtesy of the artist)

Gola Hundun is fascinated at the moment with the marks that nature can make, and presents these new handmade prints for us to look at. A land artist largely, Gola has experimented and observed our complicated relationship with the earth for more than a decade with his work.

“The human world has many examples of neglected buildings whose demolition is always very tricky and may lead to additional damage to nature,” he tells us. “In the meantime, nature immediately starts to reoccupy the land with fern and fauna, naturally and gradually replacing it.”

With his new series “Habitat”, Gola says he is researching degradation and growth with an aesthetic analysis. “I like mapping it,” he says. “It is a way to witness different cases all over the world and to show it up as a universal phenomenon.”

Here he shows us his prints made with his own version of “eco-printing”, a process that begins with the selection of leaves. Then “I use the leaves to release colors from their tannins and carothens, instead of using chemical inks.”

To learn more about this series, check out his Instagram

See Gola’s Instagram

Gola Hundun Escapes to Ivy-Covered Nature in Japan

March 17, 2020 Artists

Animals use natural space without transforming it but they seek the space to meet their needs. A cave will provide shelter for a bear. The bear will not paint it, wire it for electricity or install air-conditioning.

Gola Hundun. “Abitare”. Emilia Romagna, Italy. (photo © Johanna Invrea)

Safely (somewhat) in Japan right now, the Italian land artist Gola Hundun is studying space again for his self-created ABITARE project.

“It’s my personal research on the border between human functional space and other species’ use of space,” he tells us as we look at this ivy-covered hump of industry that he regales with gold lame. We often imagine New York City’s skyscrapers engulfed in ivy and wildflowers with enormous insects and birds freely roaming about.

“I think I want to title it ‘Presence’,” he says, “Because this time I found a space where some dead trees were re-colonized by ivy and vitalba that generate really evocative imaginary shapes,” he says. “Like Readymade sculptures, like giants and strange horse-giraffes.” You can see his eyes alight, the dialogue inside his head full of calculation and intent that turns these ephemeral “sculptures” into abstract beings inhabiting space.

He talks about his relationship with gold, which has reoccurred throughout his multiple ABITARE installation. “Gold and green is the combo color for this project. I use gold because it is for me the color of the sun, the color of the soul, of the divine.”

And of our current crises of an infectious coronavirus circling the globe and threatening humanity, killing some of us, crippling our lives in many cases; what does this Earth-Star man observe?

“For me, it is a way to critique our modern human behaviors, post-capitalism, post-economic globalization, which is the main reason why we have arrived at this point, at the brink of ecological systemic disaster.
I think this issue with Corona is a good opportunity to meditate about slow down the rhythm.”

Gola Hundun Follows Kids Art and “The Path” in Napoli

October 23, 2019 Artists

“It is less easy to sensitize people to the respect of nature,” says Italian Street Artist Gola Hundun, and you understand his entire oeuvre during the last decade.

Gola Hundun. *“The Path”*. Naples, Italy. October 2019. (photo © Johanna Invrea)

With “Sentiero”, his latest ode to pyramidic peaks that soar above the earth in Napoli for the Xenia Community Festival.

Speaking of community, Gola opened up the creative process to school children to aesthetically explore some of the themes he is most influenced by – nature, spirituality, our encounters with both. He is so moved by the collaborative drawing made by two boys named Enrico and Salvatore that he writes today to tell BSA readers about the work and the affect it had on his multi-story mural.

He shares with us the original artwork by them that he chose the sketch among many others because of its inner meaning, which he thinks is very close to own research.

“The path is represented as a thin red line, as the pathway every man should walk to reach the Knowledge shown as a golden mountain. Beside each single man there’s nature, seen as an obstacle, but is actually part of himself,” Gola tells us.

“A rich variety of vegetation dominates the lower part of the wall, creating a multi-layer prospective effect. What is very interesting is also the chromatic scale and the way the artist uses it: simple, elementary colors, to let the pure shape of the elements to come out on a very neutral background. Gold means divine value of the nature and so the mountain becomes a golden idol in the middle of the jungle of life. The contrast between the golden mountain and the cold tones of the leaves emphasizes the allegorial message beyond it.

Gola Hundun. *“The Path”*. Naples, Italy. October 2019. (photo © Vincenzo Capasso)

GOLA in Genoa, Italy: May the Circle be Unbroken

September 12, 2019 Artists

“THE ANCIENT WAY OF THE NEW CIRCLE”

New from Genoa comes this circular system from Gola Hundun, called “The Ancient Way of the New Circle.”

It is reassuring to consider the systems of our lives and our world as we regard the passing seasons of the year; revisiting, reliving, remeasuring our progress and regress and aspirations.

Gola Hundun. *“The Ancient Way Of The New Circle”* Genoa, Italy. (photo © Matteo Fontana & Luca Briganti)

Part of a 10 mural program here in the Certosa district, the artist tells us that his painting is meant to “invite people to go back to a circular system.”

“The main character of the wall is Cernunnos,” Gola tells us, “- a mythological creature belonging to the Celtic culture, a symbol of fertility, abundance, manhood and wild nature – painted in the lower part of the wall, highly visible by pedestrians.”

Gazing upon the natural elements of the composition that include a balance of phytomorphic elements, a tree of life, and a mountain, you can believe that the artist also likes to write poetry when he is in the right mood.

The color scheme may also speak to you as a powerful representation of the natural world, with blue and green being predominant – here surrounded by the harsher city palette of reds, yellows, oranges. Perhaps what hits you the most is a sense of balance that this mural achieves, even if you don’t know why exactly.

Guided Flight with Gola Hundun: “Torre di Volo” Land Art in Sardinia

May 11, 2019 Artists

When the plants and animals take over again there will still be remnants of you, as they transform your achievements and failures organically en route to natural balance.

Gola Hundun. *Torre di Volo*. Campidarte Art Residency. Sardegna, Italy. May 2019. (photo © Eleonora Riab)

The evidence of this eventuality lies not only in our predilection for self-destruction but on the current existence of the 7,000 tower-fortress structures that still dot this island of Sardinia. Time and elements have not destroyed these structures built over a period of 16 centuries – long before the event of Christ’s birth. Today they are remnants, monuments of that Nuragic civilization, but are also home to birds, four legged creatures, insects, grasses, bushes, and trees.

Italian Street Artist, muralist and land artist Gola Hundun thinks of communications towers and overlays them with references of totemic massings, historical human rituals, geographical coordinates, shamanic journeys, and patterns of aviary flight. For this installation called “Torre di volo” (Flight Tower) he also is thinking about guiding birds through controlled space.

“The central element of the installation is inspired by the forms of the flight control towers of the airports,” he says, “a type of architecture that has always fascinated me and had a strong influence on my imagination both aesthetically and poetically.”

Participating in an art residency on the property of the Campidate artists residency (near Monastir), the Italian born millennial finds the support he needs to pursue his natural art-making cycle in an environment that is closest to his personal ethos.

He says that he spotted a bird of prey called a Kestrel inside the Campidarte base buildings and became inspired to imagine himself directing the flight of birds, one further degree of interaction with nature he has pursued for most of his life.

“The installation stands today on a ridge of that land, in an elevated and strategic position, generally loved by birds of prey,” he tells us.

A continuation of a personal artists’ campaign he calls ABITARE that more than contemplates his work as potential habitat, “Torre di volo” will be complete when Gola sees a winged friend entering the doorway of his central tower. He says the entire creation is based on his “desire to create a form capable of hybridizing my fascination for the ancestral totemic verticality and the desire to create a living space easily accessible to certain species and biological niches.”

“From the tower that I interpreted, I hope that in the near future the flight of a bird of prey will begin, allowing us to observe in reality the idea of flying, going and coming back and making the structure itself come alive,” he says. “The occupation of the tower by a bird is part of the idea of the installation and is indispensable for its completion.”

Gola Hundun. *Torre di Volo*. Campidarte Art Residency. Sardegna, Italy. May 2019. (photo © Johanna Invrea)

For more about Campidarte:

Gola Hundun Activates on the Precipice of Man and Nature

December 4, 2018 Artists

“Abitare” (To Live In)

Italian Street Artist and urban interventionist Gola Hundun is often thinking about the idea of coexistence and cohabitation between humans and the rest of the natural world. He often looks for that delineation on which to create new art.

Naturally it is performed with a flourish of theatricality.

“I consider these places to be sort of a temple or a monument that speaks about the frontier between human space and the natural one,” he says of this abandoned industrial carcass that is returning back to the earth somewhere around Rimini, Italy.

Here he interacts with the ruins – a formerly useful construction of humans that behaved as if it was not part of nature, possibly in an open attack of nature. Now it looks as if he is introducing it back to the ecosystem it stood amongst and apart from.

“Today it’s clear that human behavior (especially Western humans) that sees us like the dominant species of the world who can manage all resources for our own development and not consider the rest of biosphere – these behaviors have brought the planet on the brink of an Eco-disaster,” he says.

So it is here at the scene of the crime that the forensic detective converts to holy healer, interacting with the ruins and blessing it as it convenes a unique and slow transformation.

This abandoned location is a place where spontaneous growth is happening already,” he tells us. “These places for me are a ready made work of art where I introduce my glorifying theme, trying to bring to light their intrinsic holy aura.”

Italian Street Artist in Navajo Nation: Gola Hundun Finds the Mountain

August 9, 2018 Artists

Today is #indigenouspeoplesday – but of course we talk about them more often than this. The Native American people of the Southwestern United States are called the Navajo, or the Diné. Italian spiritual-cosmologist-naturist Street Artist Gola Hundun spent three days walking in the desert here recently going to the Navajo National Monument and Monument Valley trying to get in touch with the native folks to better understand the culture and the significance of the land itself.

“I tried to combine those two elements with very different weights to generate an united image that would suggest how I feel the heart and the mind of Diné people,” he says as he describes the one story desert mural he ultimately painted with his botanical and natural motifs. Bright and optimistic, the landscape mimics the stunning views that surround and permeate the life here and he says his time here has altered his own vision of reality. The structure itself is classic; a typical abandoned petrol station you’ve probably seen in those road movies.

“The piece represents Navajo Mountain that is in the background,” he says, and the spiritual searcher finds a kinship with traditional Navajo stories about the foundational relevance of the land mass.

“This is the head of their main goddess generator for everything of their world. For me it also includes a reinterpretation of the Hózhó in the middle of the mountain at the top – flowing in spiral way. Hózhó is the bedrock of Navajo religion, which, as I understand it, means it is a combination of existing state of balance, harmony, peace and completeness. They call it walk in beauty.”

The Painted Desert Project, begun here and regularly refreshed by local Street Artist/activist/doctor Chip Thomas, continues to invite Street Artists from around the world to paint here. The cross-cultural connections have been a boon to greater understanding – and continue to affect the visual experience of riding through this rich landscape.

“I am so glad and grateful to have had the opportunity to be in the Navajo Nation and to try to share my love and respect to these amazing people,” says Gola.

Gola Hundun would like to thank his host Chip Thomas @jetsonorama. He would also like to thank @danieljosley and @ballroomdaze for helping him realize this piece and his adventure there. “A special thanks to all the native and non-native people that helped me on this trip and helped me see reality with a different point of view.”

Gola Hundun Brings Botanicals and Bees to Paris

June 23, 2018 Artists

Now that we have had our longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and Solstice has stirred libidos, plunging us into midnight runs through abandoned lots and local parks and naked splashing in the fountains, we leave our cities for something more botanical. It’s instructive that despite the many wonders of the built urban environment, most city dwellers find life incomplete without grasses, flowers, leaves, honey bees.

Street Artist Gola Hundun is fully immersed in nature with this 6 story open atrium he has just painted in the Parisian Hôtel Le Belleval and it may set your senses buzzing as well. Carefully planned and executed according to an order that mimics the natural one, these botanicals spring from the Gola well, which runs quite deep, if you are asking.

Not quite outside, and not quite in, the fresco mimics the evolution of previous works by this Italian-born Ambassador for Earth and All Her Creatures and Energies. Hopefully the hotel’s patrons will look up from their screens and glasses of Rosé to see the birds and bees, because without them we are nothing.

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