Luna Paiva Installs 300-Kilogram Stainless Steel Totem at Bofill’s La Fábrica

Three hundred kilograms of silvery rock have landed at La Fábrica, looking less like a discreet new artwork than the beginning of a particularly elegant science-fiction incident. Created by artist Luna Paiva, Totem stacks a series of imagined stones cast in stainless steel, introducing a reflective, almost otherworldly presence into the industrial architecture of Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. For Paiva, however, the staging of the object matters as much as the object itself: how it was made, where it stands and, crucially, who helped bring it there.

Paiva began her series of totems in 2018 with the elemental gesture of placing one stone on top of another. The forms used for this sculpture were modelled at full scale in clay over two years in her studio. Despite their geological appearance, none of the stones reproduces something found in nature. Their irregular angles, surfaces and proportions retain the trace of the artist’s hand, making each form the result of a deliberate decision rather than erosion or chance. Paiva describes the process as similar to producing a portrait — although here the subject is time itself.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

Once the clay models left the studio, moulds were produced and the lost-wax casting process began. The method, historically used by Ancient Greek sculptors working in bronze, was adapted here for stainless steel. Layers of wax were brushed inside the moulds to create hollow replicas, which were repeatedly coated in ceramic slurry before entering a kiln. As the wax melted away, it left cavities into which stainless steel heated to approximately 1,600°C could be poured. An apparently primitive stack of rocks therefore emerges through a process involving moulds, kilns, extreme temperatures and a considerable amount of technical choreography.