This visual and written series explores the notions of artificiality and sacralization to exacerbate their irrelevance within the investigation developed with the Altamira National Museum and Research Center. As part of an editorial work entitled Mediating the Void—a non-exhaustive and non-chronological accumulation of elements from the speculative research project—the series aims at filling the void left by the impossibility of entering the “original” cave of Altamira. Through visual exploration, this work creates an additional layer to the ever-evolving process of the co-development of an alternative narrative approaching the cave of Altamira and its agents, human and non-human.

1. The workshop (analog photograph): This is where the replica was built. The precise 3D scan serves as a base for the recreation of the geological topology. This landscape is then reworked by hand with a multitude of different crafts, from surfacing to hand painting. With a few discrepancies, the craftsmen aim to reproduce the speculated techniques from historical art practices. Their hands become a medium to explore our deep history. The workshop is where artificiality is manufactured, from a computer screen to the skilled hands of a worker. Once finished, the fac-simile is then cut into pieces and delivered to its final destination to be remounted.
2. Into the box (digital photograph): In the investigations lab, there are many artifacts that casually inhabit the tables and shelves you find around. As a neophyte, I imagine they are all coming from the deep times of human history: pigments, tools, bones, etc. Whose skull is this? Looking into the ocular cavity that sticks out of the gray plastic box, I am wondering if I am facing the gaze of someone from the Paleolithic times. In museums, wax figures and drawings represent how these women and men were supposed to look. Although based on various scientific evidence such as DNA analysis, their appearance seems to project a lot from the person who “designed” them. For example, the representation of the Red Lady of Paviland, whose skeleton was found in Wales, looked Spanish to us.
3. La Hoya (analog photograph): Over the days, this place has become a kind of sanctuary for us. Here we touch, smell, hear, dream, and speculate, as if the banal forest was the element that connects us most with our ancestors. We are not able to collect stones, but plants are allowed to be taken away. “La hoya” means “the hole”. The impossibility of collecting much, and coming here at other times of the day increases the explicit sacralization given to the cave and its art. Maybe they were already symbolizing something sacred 30’000 years ago. The humans of the Paleolithic must have spent most of their daily time in such an outdoor environment, hunting and gathering, although climatic conditions were likely different.
4. Fake cave I (series of digital photographs)
5. Fake cave II (series of digital photographs)
6. Fake cave III (series of digital photographs): The drawings are painted by hand with natural pigments. Acrylic resin serves to replicate the water drops that move along the wet surfaces of stone. I like how the textures seem so dirty and moist, when this is all actually just solid things built out of, for the most part, from petroleum derivatives. A varnish protects everything. These details are fascinating to me, as I have a hard time knowing if this showcases the strange egocentrism of our species or a very delicate respect for our environment and history. The human being—and maybe life in general—is indeed paradoxical, this place appears to be one of the most explicit testimony of this characteristic.
7.  Suspended (analog photograph): The inner skin composed of reconstituted limestone and acrylic resin is mounted on fiberglass panels with a steel membrane. Its different pieces are mounted together with bolts as a tridimensional puzzle to reconstitute the inner experience. The exterior does not matter, its aesthetic is a simple consequence of the interior. Suspended in the air with stainless steel cables, it floats as a ghost in the building. The assemblage of its elements follows discontinuous lines that remind me of the veins along the surface of an internal organ. The replica indeed acts as an organ inside the building, providing the visual experience of the cave outside of its spatial conditions, like an external prosthetic doppelganger.
8. The mask (3D scan): She mentioned seeing the mask—or the face—when going out of the final gallery. It was her first time in the cave. There were actually two of them: one that scared her, and one that reassured her. Like Janus, they seem to depict the metaphysical duality of humans and our contradictory relationship with the past and the future. I am personally much more triggered by the face that scared her. Why would it be there? Would we all see in it a terrifying figure? Was it meant to be scary? When visiting other caves in the region, I feel particularly at ease, as if I am reconnecting with an ancestral home. It is not the case for all of us.