Mikaela Stafford, Inferno still. Photo: NFSA.
Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in the early 14th century as a narrative poem in three parts: Inferno (Hell), Purgatory and Heaven. It is one of the greatest literary creations of Western literature and has given birth to countless parallel creations from the Renaissance through to the present.
The grandeur of Dante’s vision has inspired and dwarfed the endeavours of countless artists; some have viewed the Divine Comedy as a tale about morality, others saw it as a great love story or an account of a spiritual journey.
The most recent interpretation of Dante is the Inferno installation at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) by the young artist Mikaela Stafford.
She is an Australian-born, Paris-based freelance visual artist who works in 3D motion graphics. Originally, she studied for a BA (hons) in Visual Art at Sydney College of the Arts and an MA in Art in Public Spaces at RMIT. The COVID lockdown evaporated opportunities for work as a stage set designer or installation artist and Stafford, supported on JobKeeper, taught herself Adobe and 3D animation software (Cinema 4D), mainly from YouTube.
Reborn as a 3D motion graphics artist working in Cinema 4D and employing Redshift as her render engine, Stafford’s Inferno is like a vast vision of swirling masses of a gaseous hell where figures appear to materialise bubbling from the ground and enveloped in a mysterious veil as they drift through space and an endless landscape. The film sequence is conceived in monochrome – essentially black and white with rich silvery surfaces – and runs on a loop of seven minutes and ten seconds.
Stafford works in the realm of ‘Technobiophilia’ that is usually defined as a focus on life and lifelike processes as they are apparent in technology. It is a recreation of nature through digital technologies, but it is of nature that has never existed.
The artist notes: “I guess the intention is not to create anything figurative or representative of anything that actually exists, but because it’s very biomorphic and natural, it feels like a sense of familiarity, but it’s also nothing that actually exists.”
Mikaela Stafford, Inferno still, detail. Photo: NFSA
Beyond these kinetic motion graphics on a 12-metre digital screen, a pool of lava-like substance oozes towards a monumental free-standing kinetic resin sculpture and a tower of Babel message board with decipherable and indecipherable passages from Dante’s poem. The glue that ties the whole immersive installation together is the dynamic lighting and the brilliant soundscape by the well-known electronic composer Kate Durman.
Stafford’s Inferno reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, where all of one’s nightmares, dreams and aspirations come together in a surreal setting. However, Stafford’s hell on earth has been updated. It is a world that is inherently unstable, where memory and experience merge, and the space is techno-charged, and we enter a world where the uncanny has free rein. The world is fluid and nothing is fixed, and we, as viewers, are invited to dissolve into a realm from where Dante warned none will return.
Earlier this year, Stafford spent an artist residency at the NFSA when she worked on this piece. She envisages it as the first part of her Dante trilogy, with Purgatory and Heaven to follow at some time in the future. This is the most ambitious dream, as I don’t think any artist has ever managed to grasp the vision of paradise, while many seem capable of tackling the torments of hell.
Stafford’s Inferno is an out-of-this-world experience that challenges your perception of reality as you are invited to Canberra to experience your very personal piece of hell.
Mikaela Stafford (left) and Kate Durman (right). Photo: Cassie Abraham
Mikaela Stafford (artist) and Kate Durman’s (composer and sound designer) Inferno can be seen at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra, until 16 November, daily from 10 am to 3 pm. Admission is free.
