D.A.ST. Art Team

D.A.ST. Art Team (artist Danae Stratou, industrial designer Alexandra Stratou, and architect Stella Konstantinides)

Desert Breath

98-foot artificial pool of water and 178 spirals of sand mounds and depressions of equal size

An area of one million square feet in Sahara Desert of El Gouna, Egypt

1997

Bio - D.A.ST. Team consists of Danae Stratou, the installation artist, Alexandra Stratou, the industrial designer, and Stella Konstantinidis, the architect. Danae Stratou was born in Athens, Greece, went to school in London, and currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. She is an installation artists who work on large-scale installations both indoors and outdoors. She also utilizes many varying media including nature and digital technologies which focus on the natural world. Finally, she is the co-founder of Vital-Space, which aims to spread public awareness about major issues in the world. Alexandra Stratou was also born in Athens, Greece and is Danae’s sister. She attended school in London and Rhode Island for architecture. Alexandra has a private architectural practice, is a part of the Vital Space team. Stella Konstantinidis and Alexandra Stratou co-founded the architectural practice, ASKarchitects, in 2007 Athens, Greece.

Artist Statement - “The project is rooted in our common desire to work in the desert. In our mind’s eye the desert was a place where one experiences infinity. We were addressing the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind. The point of departure was the conical form, the natural formation of the sand as a material…Located between the sea and a body of mountains at the point where the immensity of the sea meets the immensity of the desert, the work functions on two different levels in terms of viewpoint: from above as a visual image, and from the ground, walking the spiral pathway, a physical experience...Desert Breath still exists becoming through its slow disintegration, an instrument to measure the passage of time.” -D.A.ST. Team

Background - Desert Breath is a very large installation art piece created in the Sahara Desert in Egypt. It was created by a team of artists who worked together to create the idea and then execute the piece. The team was created in 1995 for the project and completed the piece in 1997. Due to the vast size of this piece, a backhoe was used to displace 280,000 square feet of sand from the two types of cones. Desert Breath is viewable by Google Earth although will eventually disappear gradually due to natural erosion. (http://www.danaestratou.com/projects/exterior/desert-breath)

This piece fits into the central theme of this gallery as the team of artists reshaped nature in creating this piece. Further, the team want their viewers to reexamine their connection to nature as they say refer to the “desert as a state of mind”. Finally, the piece slowly changes and disintegrates back into its natural state due to the erosion that takes place.





Link to Google Earth view of Desert Breath

https://www.google.com/maps/@27.37972,33.6318804,614m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en