MIRRORSCAPE is a sculpted dystopian landscape created for Mona (Museum of Old and New Art) in Tasmania, using 80 tonnes of compacted sand sourced from the island.

This imaginary landscape was inspired by different dark forces, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, bulldozers – the powers of destruction. During his time in Tasmania, Mercier investigated and photographed each element, object and patterns of geological erosion to compose this dramatic scene, giving the feeling that this speculative situation could be grounded there.

In the artwork, there is a strong contrast between the violence of the representation and the softness and fragility of the material. In the collective imagination, sand is tied to childhood and summer memories. But here the child has become an adult, and today sand is an endangered material. To build our cities, streets and houses, the extraction of sand results and causes the destruction of mountains, the draining of rivers, and the disappearance of islands and coastlines.

As a man made landscape, MIRRORSCAPE reflects how humanity is building its own destruction, and thus raises the question of “natural disasters” – are natural disasters “natural”? While the calm and the stillness meet the noise and the chaos, an uncanny reconciliation seems to take place in silence. The installation is stretched between a prophetic time and an archaic time – a fossil from the future, the memory of an ancient drama, or a sand prophecy? It is also a giant hourglass. Day after day, month after month, the shapes will erode, the elements will fall apart, the landscape will disappear. But the sand will remain and follow its own journey.