Adrian Paci: The Column

Overview

Watch this breathtaking piece of filmmaking and you'll never take a marble column for granted again. Armed with his camera, Albanian video artist Adrian Paci set out to follow a slab of marble — starting with its extraction from the earth, through its journey over vast oceans, to its chiselling, by the hands of an extraordinarily dedicated group of Chinese labourers.

Touching on themes of dislocation, exploitation and globalisation (without sledgehammering them), Paci employs an epic, transcendent approach, creating a work that's beautiful and devastating at the same time. The Column was a smash hit at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Before that, it exhibited in Paris, as part of Paci's Lives in Transit exhibition at the Jeu de Paume, and in Milan at PAC.