"TANIRA says: the traces we leave and the traces the world leaves within us belong to the same story."

This work connects a distant planetary landscape with a human-made object designed for protection in battle.

The first image shows gullies carved into sand dunes on Mars in the region of Matara Crater. Observations from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal that these channels change over time as seasonal frost triggers flows that reshape the sand. Even in landscapes that appear frozen and ancient, slow processes of movement and transformation continue.

Opposite them appears a bronze greave from the fourth century BCE, produced in South Italian Greek culture. The armor protected the warrior’s body and was often decorated with the image of the Gorgoneion, the face of the Gorgon, intended to ward off enemies and grant symbolic power to its bearer.

The Martian landscape etched by seasonal flows and the bronze armor shaped to protect the human body present two surfaces marked by force: one shaped by planetary climate and time, the other by human belief and warfare.

Between moving sand and shaped metal opens a conversation about traces of power, natural and human, inscribed upon the surface of things.