elparo

There’s something kind of cryptic and abstractly disturbing about an artist flying halfway around the world to build an oversized paper plane (well, it’s outline, anyway (and it’s not made of paper, but wood)) and to nose-dive it into the ground, only to jump back on a real plane and return home. I don’t think it’s ironic or paradoxical, but something about it feels perplexing and kind of amiss.

French artist, elparo, takes this symbol of a society that always strives to move faster, and slams it into the earth amongst the trees on the fringes of Weyba Creek Conservation Park. Crashing this emblem of the modern world speaks both to a need for intervention and change as it does our imminent demise, should we choose not to heed the former. But a plane, of course, is also a means of escape.

While we perhaps don’t always make the connection, paper planes are a form of origami. Echoing this materiality, elparo evokes the Japanese legend of the thousand paper cranes – prophesising that whoever folds a thousand cranes will see their wish granted – as well as the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl from Hiroshima who developed leukemia as a result of being exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb. Learning of the legend, she began folding a thousand cranes in hope she would be granted her wish to live.

ARTIST BIO

Created by and for public spaces, elparo’s works are part of a process of sculptural experimentation prioritising natural and recycled materials, typically from the place where they are installed. elparo is the idea of a joint creation, of sharing, of discovering a place and the people who live there. elparo is simply the sum of several independent and unique projects, a discovery of the world while leaving an ephemeral trace.

A giant wooden paper plane that explores deeper ideas—like change, peace, and life in a fast-moving world.