A new 42,6sqm outdoor mosaic sculpture conceived by acclaimed South African artist, Marco Cianfanelli and created by mosaic artists from Spier Architectural Arts,_ is currently under construction at Spier.
Titled ‘The Dying Slave’, the sculptural artwork is divided into nine columns. Each column measures 4,1m in height and is positioned at a distance from one another to cover an installation area of almost 30sqm. The mosaic panels are placed on both sides of the columns, with the one side a ‘positive’, and the other a negative (inversion) of the same image, resulting in a black and white face. This result refers to notions of ideal beauty in relation to race and difference. The positive image will face towards the Conference Centre, and the inverted image towards the Spier Hotel.
The 42,6sqm contemporary style mosaic was put together using limestone, marble, granite, pebbles, industrial glass and porcelain, glass smalti tiles from Venice, Italy and hand crafted ceramic elements. It constructed with 1500kg of material and consists of almost 225 000 pieces of tesserae (pieces of stone). It took ten mosaic artists five months (6986 hours) to complete the artwork.
The installation will be finished by mid-July and the artwork will be unveiled early September 2012 during a public launch event at Spier.
