The Post building features the artwork

A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Lose and Waste (2021)

Installation: mixed media on paper, 30 × 1 m. Courtesy of the artist

From the lower end of the drawings to the top, A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Lose and Waste, presents a range of depictions attempting to fit well into Evgeny Zamyatin’s book We. Walking up the staircase, inside the shaft, on a roll of paper four stories high, the viewer sees an arrangement of drawings that depicts a visual epic telling the story of a fictional universe and civilization, from the emergence to its collapse. In his depiction of numerical universe, the artist emphasizes that numbers are the body and soul of all universes and some societies, and that whatever exists in any universe is made up of exact amounts or numbers and that its material composition would fall apart, should any of the endless amounts fail to be exact, similar to any kind of chemical formula. As the main subject of the whole art work, at the very top and end of the cascade of drawings on the roll, the strange head of a Mayan Mathematician or God rules, erupting in all directions a shower and waterfall of numerical symbols of time and matter to perpetuity.

Alfredo Ceibal is a Guatemalan self-taught artist. His works are exposed in museums and galleries all over the world. Alfredo Ceibal’s artistic practice has evolved from references to social rites of Guatemalan culture to investigations towards Anthropocene and its implications in the planetary biological wear. This newly commissioned artwork embraces this focus and presents it through the lense of Zamyatin’s dystopia.