A MONUMENT ARRIVES AT BOFILL’S LA FÁBRICA
Three hundred kilograms of silvery rock have landed at La Fábrica, looking less like a discreet new artwork than the beginning of a particularly elegant science-fiction incident. Created by artist Luna Paiva, Totem stacks a series of imagined stones cast in stainless steel, introducing a reflective, almost otherworldly presence into the industrial architecture of Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. For Paiva, however, the staging of the object matters as much as the object itself: how it was made, where it stands and, crucially, who helped bring it there.
The sculpture draws on archaeological patterns shared by civilisations across different periods and territories. Paiva sees La Fábrica itself as an archaeological site, where industrial remains are gradually absorbed and transformed by nature, architecture and new ideas. Totem extends this accumulation of histories while reflecting the artist’s own Guaraní, Spanish, Scottish and Polish ancestry. Different cultures, disciplines and generations are compressed into a single monument, apparently getting along rather better than most family groups manage.
paiva began developing her series of totems in 2018 | images by Gregori Civera
IMAGINED STONES BECOME A PORTRAIT OF TIME
Paiva began her series of totems in 2018 with the elemental gesture of placing one stone on top of another. The forms used for this sculpture were modelled at full scale in clay over two years in her studio. Despite their geological appearance, none of the stones reproduces something found in nature. Their irregular angles, surfaces and proportions retain the trace of the artist’s hand, making each form the result of a deliberate decision rather than erosion or chance. Paiva describes the process as similar to producing a portrait — although here the subject is time itself.
Once the clay models left the studio, moulds were produced and the lost-wax casting process began. The method, historically used by Ancient Greek sculptors working in bronze, was adapted here for stainless steel. Layers of wax were brushed inside the moulds to create hollow replicas, which were repeatedly coated in ceramic slurry before entering a kiln. As the wax melted away, it left cavities into which stainless steel heated to approximately 1,600°C could be poured. An apparently primitive stack of rocks therefore emerges through a process involving moulds, kilns, extreme temperatures and a considerable amount of technical choreography.
layers of wax and ceramic were used to create the cavities for the molten stainless steel
TOTEM RISES ABOVE THE ROOFTOPS
The sculpture’s placement at La Fábrica was proposed by Pablo Bofill, Paiva’s husband. The artist initially felt intimidated by introducing her work into a building that commands such architectural respect, but came to see the project as part of the site’s continuing exchange with the people who inhabit it. La Fábrica leaves its mark on those who pass through its spaces, she explains, while remaining open to their influences in return. Totem does not attempt to compete with the building; instead, it enters its layered history as another object shaped by labour, memory and transformation.
That collective dimension continued through the sculpture’s production and installation. Totem was cast by Alfa Arte, a cooperative foundry in the Basque Country. Nadia Rodriguez, an architect at the Taller and the daughter of one of the foundry’s founders, oversaw its installation, which became one of her father’s final projects before retirement. Héctor Civera, son of longtime Taller photographer Gregori Civera, filmed the process with Gabriel Ventosa and Bernat Brondo, while Gregori photographed the sculpture suspended from a crane. As the steel stones floated above the rooftops, the scene recalled the airborne figure in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. For a few improbable minutes, a 300-kilogram monument managed to look weightless.
the casting process required stainless steel heated to approximately 1,600 degrees celsius
Alfa Arte cast the sculpture in stainless steel using the lost-wax technique