| Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities has been an influential text to architects, artists and designers. The enigmatic cities that Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan are representations of Polo’s experience of Venice as well as Calvino’s projection of modern cities. The descriptions of the cities provide vivid imagery that are open to each reader’s imagination. The success of the text in forming the imagined places relies on how a reader can project their experiences onto it.
Mirabilia invited international artist, architects and designers to interpret Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” into models/sculpture within a 200mm x 200mm dimension. Contributors represent their interpretation of a city from the book through physical mediums of their choosing. 55 cities are exhibited, bringing the book into physicality. The interpretations shown in Mirabilia elaborate on the relationship of space and written word, creating original languages. |
