Yiquan He

Tracing these pigments used by Caravaggio we arrive at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, on the edge of the city at Santa Maria la Bruna. In a strip of land by the sea are several quarries which were once among the most productive in Campania. The Villa Inglese quarries exploited the lava deposited by two eruptions, in 1631 and 1760; they produced lime, mica, and various minerals. 

Today these quarries are abandoned. The space is occupied by a train maintenance centre and a waste recycling company, an existing warehouse has fallen into disrepair, and the railway line connecting Naples and Pompeii stretches along the coast. At the junction of these overlapping landscapes and spaces, an new art centre focuses on the production and promotion of contemporary pigments for the conservation and construction of Naples and its artefacts. The abandoned quarries are repurposed as gardens to grow pigment crops, a studio is dedicated to researching, analysing and testing pigments and demonstrating production processes to the public, a painting restoration studio is dedicated to the care and maintenance of important Neapolitan paintings, displayed temporarily in a gallery nearby before they are returned to their regular sites. A lecture hall promotes the knowledge and history of pigments. 

This art centre facilitates specific intersections by reoccupying gaps where multiple landscapes meet, connecting the quarry, the railway, the waste recycling centre, the train maintenance centre and the coast. It reactivates the abandoned warehouse, re-purposing and adapting the existing space to produce a new, more environmentally-attuned complex to generate economic and social benefit. As pigment production reoccupies the gap, the landscape gathers places where material is extracted, processed into products, consumed and dumped for recycling. A new cyclic material industry is established, promoting a new field of circular economy on the edges of Naples