Mariana Castillo Deball: Replaying Life’s Tape

Visiting South Australia’s Flinders Ranges last year, Mexico-born, Berlin-based artist Mariana Castillo Deball was fascinated by what she saw. Known as the Ediacara Hills, the area is famous for a group of fossils so significant that they spawned their own geological age, the Ediacaran Period, some 635 to 542 million years ago. Drawing on her knowledge of anthropology, archeology and paleontology, Castillo Deball used ink rubbings to capture impressions of the fossils she found there, which in turn became the foundation for her new exhibition, Replaying Life’s Tape. Incorporating immersive textile dioramas, linocut-silicone prints, drawings, photographs and fossil casts, the exhibition casts a light on a part of history so distant it is impossible to imagine. It’s the first time the artist has exhibited in Australia.