The Ex.A.R.U. (Exo Auxiliary Respiratory Unit) project involves a monoculture greenhouse
(featuring broad-leaved aglaonema and alocasia plants), around which an experiential situation of controlled breathing takes place, necessary to maintain human functions in extreme environments where air is absent, scarce, or unsuitable for inhalation. In outer space, which is at the core of the artist’s interest, this speculative scenario appears as an imaginary landscape that prompts contemplation about the survival of humans, who are physiologically determined by the atmospheric substrate of their home planet. In this imaginary dramaturgy, the greenhouse is conceived as one of many units filled with vegetation optimized for maximum oxygen production and equipped with sensors and watering systems that extract water and nutrients for plant nutrition from human urine, acting as life-support systems for the survival of the human body in an airless environment. In Ex.A.R.U., the experience of breathing air, which is taken for granted on planet Earth, becomes—via the momentary experience of asphyxia—the ultimate edge, where visitors don a breathing mask connected to the dome, allowing them to experience and internalize the elemental necessity, as well as the ephemerality, of the thin layer of air that envelops all life on Earth.