The Sensor, The Censers, and The Holy Sensers (2025)
Presented at Prospects 2025 .
Official text by Sarah Van Binsbergen found here
Text from the artists’ instagram:
“This hand-polished and dirty pseudo-replica of the Cathedral of Santiago — home of the smelly pilgrims —, was the perfect way for me to bring together the ideas I have been digesting these last years.
Within its non-existent walls, it hosted between four to seven art pieces (depending on perception) which reflected on knowledge from different angles, contrasting and questioning how we know what we think we know, and the meanings behind our cognition.
A contemporary incense and its burner, an old artwork — Nada Nuevo — meant to be stepped on; the inner machinations of catholic symbolism — once you learn about Prisciliano; a minimalist antifascist fountain; Velazquez’s las lanzas — and its pointless propaganda in the land of the victors; the immovable ladder of exponential knowledge; the Sisyphean enterprise of mimicking our most advanced technology by melting silicon with the sun in an attempt to create a microchip; the gradual and unstoppable gallium-induced corrosion of a time representation of all the thuribles that ever existed...
All to bring to the thinking table my artistic methods and three forms of knowledge: surface knowledge — what we are drawn to; disappearing knowledge — like the universe expansion theory; and the knowledge that already has been lost.
It is important to say, that the departing note of this work, was the fact that it had to be silent. I had to suppress my natural inclination to use sound as a strong sensorial interface -for the sanity of my artist neighbours. For this, I decided to use the oscillating, meditating and hypnotic movements and smells of the Contemporary Botafumeiro to attract the attention of the pilgrims of the art fair.”
The installation is formed around the idea of an empty church, a negative form of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, it becomes the church of Perception and Knowledge. The counterpoint arches from which The Contemporary Botafumeiro (2025) hangs by a thread echo the style of those that support the moving mechanisms of the original. Its negative space is emphasized. From the front side of the installation, one can see through to the altars that contain different works: the centerpiece, a small altar with The Sensor (2025); the crypt; and two side altars. On the left, the one housing Temporal Gallium Botafumeiros (2025), and on the right, within the church’s spire, the altar with The Lost Botafumeiro (2025), which is found slowly dripping.
The Temporal Gallium-Aluminium Botafumeiros (2025) is found at the left end of the installation. This sculpture is made out of laser-cut aluminium to which Gallium has been applied. The two-dimensional shape of each of the axes of this Botafumeiro is made with an example of different censers of Christianity. The shape of censers, of different beliefs and ideas, all represented within the shape of the Contemporary, of the Botafumeiro which is currently in use. Which represents the reigning notion of perception. The platonic ideal of censers for Catholics. The zeitgeist or the dogma corrupted by the fragility of its nature.
In this time based piece, the Gallium corrodes the aluminium -turning the metal to dust during the lapse of the art fair. Within hours the aluminium decomposed and the sculpture dissolved.
In the crypt of the Cathedral of Santiago lie the relics venerated as those of Saint James (Santiago), the patron saint of Spain. Yet some traditions hold that the remains are in fact those of Priscillian, an ascetic priest who lived in the 4th century and was executed for heresy around 385 in Trier. Priscillian, originally from Galicia, was the first Christian executed by order of the Church. Later accounts describe him as celibate, ascetic, and proto-egalitarian, and some even anachronistically portray him as a precursor to vegetarian or “proto-feminist” ideals. His followers are said to have transported his body back to Galicia for burial near Iria Flavia (modern-day Padrón, close to Santiago). The route they took bears similarities to the later pilgrimage path of Santiago.
Because of these two intertwined histories, the crypt, found in the mirrored floor at the center of the installation, contains a sculpture consisting of six stepper motors under a thick sheet of plexiglass. This work, titled Machinations of Priscilliano (2025), reflects on the mechanisms and industry that sustain such narratives. The motors move at varied speeds that range from almost imperceptible to fast, sending vibrations through the work. During the Prospects showcase, their movements and sounds were subdued to suit the environment. Each of the six motors, with its offset counterweight, is capable of producing acoustic compositions, speaking with its own almost-human voice.
The Sensor (2025) is positioned at the center of the installation, acting as the nexus that visually, symbolically, and conceptually interconnects the three main Botafumeiro works. It also serves as an interactive element, modifying certain compositional aspects of the installation. Conceived as a relic of the pursuit of knowledge, it takes the form of a small pseudo-transistor created through Sisyphean methodologies. Its fabrication process naively emulated the most technologically advanced methods of contemporary industrial production: melting the raw components of a microchip by hand with solar-concentrating lenses, and experimenting with crystallization techniques reminiscent of those used in semiconductor manufacturing. Industrial recipes for the production of integrated circuits were carefully studied and then re-enacted during the summer of 2024.
The Lost Botafumeiro (2025) is located at the altar to the right of the minimalist church. It takes the form of a liquid metal fountain, inspired by Alexander Calder’s antifascist Mercury Fountain (1937), created for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair. In this work, the narrative and positioning of the elements follow the same corruptive process as in The Temporal Gallium-Aluminium Botafumeiro (2025). However, in this instance, the process has continued for so long that the botafumeiro it would have been dripping onto has completely dissolved. This dissolution becomes an analogue to the concept of reachable cosmological horizon or the limits of knowing what has totally disappeared.
The tower that supports the gallium dripper is also the site of the Immovable Ladder of Exponential Knowledge (2025). This piece is based on the ladder found on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—a contentious and problematic object which, whenever moved, has historically sparked violence among the three principal Christian denominations that cohabit that place of worship.
From a distance, the pikes rising from the altars shape the composition of the sculpture so that it resembles Diego de Velázquez’s The Surrender of Breda. This painting—created as a propagandistic celebration of a rare victory during the decline of the Spanish Empire—gains new resonance when revisited in the Netherlands, the land of the victors.
Text made for The Contemporary Botafumeiro as a standalone piece:
“ The Contemporary Botafumeiro was made in Madrid in 2023 as a replica of the actual Botafumeiro, which is famously found in the Cathedral of Santiago. It has been swinging since around the year 1300, but now it does so on fewer occasions. This Cathedral is the destination of the pilgrimages of many that seek miracles related to the healing of themselves or others, or of people in many kinds of spiritual journeys, or for sport, and for tourism. This has happened since around the time of the Reconquista, where more Catholic presence was needed in the southern boundaries of Europe. There is a whole industry that developed around it. It is arguably the biggest marketing campaign since the death of Saint Peter.
In the past, and after a very long journey, all those pilgrims, with their unwashed bodies, would come to sleep -with maybe not so much hygiene- inside the walls of the cathedral. And although this practice isn’t done in present times, back then the stench must have been quite pungent, so the priests complained, and the Botafumeiro was imposed-as well as a new tradition consisting of bathing in a river close to the cathedral.
Back then, the censer would swing during mass to purify the air, on the many liturgies for the many pilgrims. One would think that this practice would be insulting in some manner to the many that visited, but apparently, other things were said about the meaning of this peculiar ritual, with different spiritual reasonings attributed to purification. I suppose that the visions of a smoking chunk of metal swinging at your face as a symbol of your lack of hygiene aren’t the best to witness upon your arrival to such a sacred space. The hypnotic notions of the fast-moving thurible, the liturgical incense, the sounds of the choir, and the overall numinosity given by the architecture of Saint Jacques’ Cathedral probably distracted the pilgrims from such earthly matters and brought their consciousness to other affairs.
In the Netherlands, the use of incense is associated with death. In the Dutch Catholic context, it was used to cover the smell of decomposition from the rich and the holy buried within the churches’ floors. It was also used at home to cover the smell of corpses that would begin to decompose as soon as they died, since refrigeration wasn’t really a thing yet. In this country, there is a strong correlation with the smell of incense and death. Who or what has died in this context? I think we all know. Today, this foul odor is covered with the smell of fruity vaporizers and hormonal yet harmonious notes.”
As part of the Sensor, the Censers, and The Holy Sensers, the Contemporary Botafumeiro was stripped of some of it’s performative elements such as it’s smoke machines and bare speakers. Its original appearance was the one below. The fruity smells of vaping flavors intermixed with the sound composition and the fragrances of the most popular dioceses of Spain.
