Ego, art and sacred lands

Mt Tindaya is another sacred place to suffer from one person's need to leave his mark ...(from Northern Earth 82)

Of all the threats to sacred landscapes, art would seem to be the least. Yet the exalted status of art can lead to excesses that rightly give pause to environmentalists of whatever persuasion. Northern Earth has discussed the tension between landscape and art before, but it is a theme that deserves far more discussion in e.m. journals than has so far been the case. In NE 65, Jill Smith called into question Steve Dilworth's commissioned excavation of the Hag's Navel, an artwork that involved removal of stone from West Stocklett hill on South Harris, while more recently there has been growing concern over pseudo-Celtic graffiti and other random contemporary art on the cup-and-ring centre of Ilkley Moor (see NE 79-81). The issue is not the quality of the art, but more whether artists should seek to impose their vision on places which already have an artistic-cum-ritual significance; does art enhance such significance or place an unwelcome contemporary influence on the perception of that place? Such concern is surely not new; it would have been an issue, though without means to be expressed, in the landscape gardening of the 17th century, and may even have been a matter of complaint in the landscape shaping of prehistory or the imposition of geomantic and artistically accomplished temples and churches on pagan sites around the world.

Sometimes, however, an artist's impact on the environment, sacred or otherwise, is unequivocally egotistical and negative. Such a case may be made for the ageing Spanish sculptor, Eduardo Chillida. International acclaim seems to have gone to his head, as he is seeking to leave a monument to posterity, celebrating himself through a grandiose confusion of art with ego. He has proposed a work which would excavate a huge 50m-square cube from the side of a mountain, and the project has been taken up by the government of the Canary Islands. They have offered him Mt Tindaya, on the island of Fuerteventura, for his vision. It would enhance Canary prestige and tourism, they claim, while making the island (already attracting around a million visitors a year) a grand testimony for the artist.

It would also raise approximately £150m from sale of the rock quarried out for Chillida's 11-storey-high pretension. The mountain is an old volcanic plug; its constituent material is volcanic porphyry, "honey-coloured with burnt red swirls", highly valued for civic and commercial building facings. The grand gesture may not be for the sake of art or the commemoration of Chillida after all.

It is certainly not for the celebration of land, as it would mean abandoning the protected status conferred on the mountain in 1987. Apart from its geological and ecological value, Mt Tindaya, off-limits to tourists, is a historical holy mountain, sacred to the indigenous Guanches people wiped out by Spanish invasion; their neolithic settlements, shrines, funerary monuments and 'podomorphs' bear witness to the ritual nature of the mountain. The podomorphs are carvings resembling pairs of feet, unique to Fuerteventura. Of 200 known podomorphs, around thirty have been stolen in recent years. There is apparently some evidence in their alignment that they figured in astronomical observations.

Chillida refuses to countenance objections to the plans, and even tries to turn the ancient rock art to his advantage - "I went up and found those footprints left by the Guanches and it turned out they are identical to my signature, but with a few more fingers...". Opposition groups in the Canaries have cited pressing environmental and archaeological grounds for halting any such development on the mountain, and have hinted darkly at government links with quarrying companies. Caught between silly egotism and corruption, Tindaya is likely to become a monument, not to Gaia, but to human self-aggrandisement.

Compiled from: 'Mt Tindaya suffers an art attack', Ian Clark, Earth Matters 43, Summer 1999 & pers. comm.; 'Canary Carve-up', George Monbiot, Guardian 12-2-00.

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