SACRUM
ART INSTALATION, PALMA DE MALLORCA, 2024
Sacrum
SACRUM is an immersive art installation uniting two artistic projects: Bone Simple, an interactive mosaic performance by Ruth Minola, and Masks, a series of sculptural papier-mâché masks and canvases by Anna-Alexandra.
Art holds the power to dissolve things.
In her stirring speech “The Question of Light” at the Rothko Chapel—a place that holds Mark Rothko’s paintings and serves as a sanctuary for spiritual and human rights dialogue—Tilda Swinton says:
“Art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. It also holds the power to mend things: to join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us with others and ourselves.”
Any art is sacrum—a “sacred bone,” a portal to transformation, a path back to the primordial womb of life. It invites complete renewal, mystical rebirth, and a deeper closeness to the human essence.
As artists living through this moment of global tragedy, we continue to search for traces of humanity—a humanity revealed not through grand gestures, but through quiet, continuous acts of care, tenderness, and love. These past months have brought profound sorrow and disorientation. Days when the rising sun does not herald renewal but reveals the debris of the night’s destruction. We have been forced to re-examine what is permissible, what is justified , and to recalibrate our moral compass. More than anything, this time has taught us to think with our hearts—for no matter how much we debate and contextualise war, it is always the civilian who suffers most.
We are both deeply engaged in the discourse of human rights and firmly believe that none of us is free until all of us are. This extends beyond Palestine to places like Congo and Sudan—lands also torn by war, displacement, and genocide.
We understand the magnitude of these issues and how overwhelming they can be. However, even in the face of such enormity, if you ever find yourself consumed by anger, sadness, and the weight of your thoughts, let your tears articulate your feelings, and love… love with the utmost strength. ¨The condition of being good is that it should always be possible for you to be morally destroyed by something you couldn’t prevent. To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world…¨ and the greatest tragedy of all is the attempt to guard against hurt by petrifying that essential softness of the soul, for that denies our basic humanity. (Analysis on Martha Nussbaum by Maria Popova)”
Bone Simple
An Interactive Mosaic Performance by Ruth Minola
Bone Simple is an intimate and meditative performance that explores impermanence, interconnection, and the healing power of communal art. In this contemplative act, the artist invites the audience into a shared ritual—dissolving the boundaries between creator and observer.
Through the symbolic act of decomposing imitations of human bones and recomposing them into mosaic form, the piece mirrors the cyclical nature of life and death. The rhythmic sound of the mosaic hammer evokes the passage of time, the fragility of existence, and the beauty of impermanence. Each moment becomes an invitation to inhabit the present, to surrender to the quiet force of transformation.
Above all, Bone Simple emphasizes community: each participant contributes to the mosaic, reminding us that all individual experiences are part of a greater, interconnected whole.
Masks
Sculptural Papier-Mâché Masks and Canvases by Anna-Alexandra
“The Mask engages with our shared unconscious and our shared consciousness simultaneously in a powerfully affective way… When the mask is symbolic of some shared, archetypal essence, we project from a collective emotional store and cultural mythology onto a shared symbol of the collective Self.”
(Matthew J. Cawson, The Mask and the Self)
Masks are perhaps one of the most profound and enigmatic expressions of the plastic arts. Despite their ubiquity through history, their power persists. A mask allows us to see beyond appearances—it is not an object alone but a dialogue between the seen and the seer. It demands encounter.
Across cultures and epochs, masks have played vital roles in rituals of initiation, healing, transformation, and spiritual communion. In the ancient world, masks served as instruments of revelation—giving form to the formless, granting access to the invisible world of gods and spirits.
For early humans, overwhelmed by the dynamism of the natural and inner world, the mask became a symbolic bridge between the known and the unknown. Rather than concealing, it reveals. It is an archetype, a magical face, a mirror through which we glimpse deeper truths.
SACRUM: A Philosophical Intersection
Sacrum is the meeting point of two artistic languages, converging in a shared inquiry: how do we assimilate the crises of war, grief, and moral collapse while preserving the essence of our humanity?
“The human body is sometimes referred to as the ‘sacred vessel,’ its gestures—folded hands, whispered prayers, beating hearts—imbued with symbolic meaning. These actions serve both to express social structure and to shape cosmological models that reflect it.”
(López Austin 1988; Houston et al. 2006)
In both Mesoamerican and Old World cosmologies, the os sacrum—the “sacred bone”—was a potent symbol. Associated with fertility, rebirth, and passage between worlds, the sacrum was seen as a mystical threshold. In Mesoamerica, it marked the entry point for shamans and spirits to traverse cosmic realms. Ancient traditions viewed this bone as the seed of resurrection—the luz of the Hebrews, the ajb of the Arabs, the echo of Egyptian myth.
“One can identify a basic worldview as shamanic: positing multiple levels of existence and portals between them… The human body becomes a template upon which the cosmos is mapped, enabling a deeper understanding—and partial mastery—of the world’s forces.”
(Brian Stross, The Mesoamerican Sacrum Bone: Doorway to the Otherworld)
If reason alone cannot guide us toward the preservation of our humanity, then we must turn to myth, to imagination, to the subconscious. In this symbolic framework, sacrum emerges not just as a bone—but as a portal of resilience, renewal, and remembrance. A site where grief becomes ritual, and art becomes a vessel for survival.
