Big Five Biotic Transition

This installation is composed of five lecterns on a table. Each lectern holds a book, with all white pages a part the description of the term "Extintion" in one of the five languages of the five biggest economic powers: Chine, US, India, Japan, Russia. The bookmark of each dictionary is tied to five frogs lying on the ground. As it happened in the past, each extinction is followed by the birth of a new species and by a new geological era. Accordingly, Maria Rebecca Ballestra has chosen the frog as the herald of renaissance and collective welfare. The image of the five big economic powers is shown beside the phenomenon of the big five mass extinctions. This could lead to the extinction of mankind, regardless of our belonging to one nation rather than to another. Big Five Biotic Transition is a careful and dramatic reflection on the disappearance of humanity. Nature and the Earth revolt, leading the artist to ask herself about the fateful results of globalization. In fact, this is a short geological period in which a massive subversion of the eco-system is takes place. A large number of living species will disappear, while other species will survive and become dominant. The extinction rate corresponds to the number of biological families of marine invertebrates and vertebrates that become extinct every million years. To date, scientists have identified five big mass-extinction events (also called Big Five) within tervals between them of respectively 69, 124, 71 and 115 million years.