BIRTH CALCULATION
BIRTH CALCULATION
Installation with cassiterite stone, charcoal, wagi (ultramarine powder), iron, tin, ceramics with tin oxide, bricks
Commissioned by the Thailand Biennale, Phuket
2025
Birth Calculation investigates the emergence of the metal—tin—through the chemical encounter between cassiterite ore and charcoal through the process of smelting. Here, charcoal is specifically a tool of transition—a filter and guide—echoing its presence as an agent of the transmutation of matter. In this equation, cassiterite (𝑆𝑛O₂) is mixed with charcoal (C) and both materials are heated to 1,300ºC. The chemical reaction removes oxygen from cassiterite, transforming it into tin (Sn). Thus, charcoal becomes a channel for the birth of tin: historically used as fuel in smelting. Charcoal, paradoxically, is today added as a soil corrective to restore post-tin mining lands, which leads us to realise the intrinsic potential for the transformation of this material at different stages of mineral life.
These objects become poetic propositions in the hands of Luana Vitra. Cassiterite stone anchors the work to the geological origins of Phuket, Thailand, which under extractive capitalism become tin mines, and after all their minerals have been extracted, become golf courses. Around it, glazed ceramics designed with tin oxide, bricks, charcoal, cassiterite, ultramarine blue powder, and water compose an environment where matter stages the passage — between destruction and renewal, chemistry and alchemy, creating a body of work that draws our gaze to transformations.
Birth Calculation reflects the environment that shaped Vitra's sensibility, the industrial city of Contagem, surrounded by mining towns in the state of Minas Gerais. There, the monumental landscapes are deeply marked by the literal and historical residues of the extraction of iron, gold, aluminium, among other minerals. Working across sculpture, installation, drawing, and performance, she negotiates between the tactile and the elegiac, drawing on history and spirituality to offer metaphors for survival, repair, and transmutation.
This concern with transformation extends to her treatment of materials, which she approaches as a medium, media, and means of metaphysical and political elaborations. Through gestures of braiding, cutting, welding, and moving, she reconfigures universal symbols and everyday objects, instrumentalising them as agents of metamorphosis. Through these processes, Vitra proposes an abstraction and evocation capable of metabolising biography and opening the audience to both sensory encounter and political discourse.
— Renée Akitelek Mboya
Installation with cassiterite stone, charcoal, wagi (ultramarine powder), iron, tin, ceramics with tin oxide, bricks
Commissioned by the Thailand Biennale, Phuket
2025
Birth Calculation investigates the emergence of the metal—tin—through the chemical encounter between cassiterite ore and charcoal through the process of smelting. Here, charcoal is specifically a tool of transition—a filter and guide—echoing its presence as an agent of the transmutation of matter. In this equation, cassiterite (𝑆𝑛O₂) is mixed with charcoal (C) and both materials are heated to 1,300ºC. The chemical reaction removes oxygen from cassiterite, transforming it into tin (Sn). Thus, charcoal becomes a channel for the birth of tin: historically used as fuel in smelting. Charcoal, paradoxically, is today added as a soil corrective to restore post-tin mining lands, which leads us to realise the intrinsic potential for the transformation of this material at different stages of mineral life.
These objects become poetic propositions in the hands of Luana Vitra. Cassiterite stone anchors the work to the geological origins of Phuket, Thailand, which under extractive capitalism become tin mines, and after all their minerals have been extracted, become golf courses. Around it, glazed ceramics designed with tin oxide, bricks, charcoal, cassiterite, ultramarine blue powder, and water compose an environment where matter stages the passage — between destruction and renewal, chemistry and alchemy, creating a body of work that draws our gaze to transformations.
Birth Calculation reflects the environment that shaped Vitra's sensibility, the industrial city of Contagem, surrounded by mining towns in the state of Minas Gerais. There, the monumental landscapes are deeply marked by the literal and historical residues of the extraction of iron, gold, aluminium, among other minerals. Working across sculpture, installation, drawing, and performance, she negotiates between the tactile and the elegiac, drawing on history and spirituality to offer metaphors for survival, repair, and transmutation.
This concern with transformation extends to her treatment of materials, which she approaches as a medium, media, and means of metaphysical and political elaborations. Through gestures of braiding, cutting, welding, and moving, she reconfigures universal symbols and everyday objects, instrumentalising them as agents of metamorphosis. Through these processes, Vitra proposes an abstraction and evocation capable of metabolising biography and opening the audience to both sensory encounter and political discourse.
— Renée Akitelek Mboya