9th May 2026 • 0

Ode to Salt

Atoll journal (co-written with ChatGPT-5.4 and first uploaded 09th May 2026) explores the huge environmental irony and paradox being highlighted by Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno in his Land Art installation El Santuario del Agua (“The Water Sanctuary”) due for completion in 2026 on the Salinas Grandes salt flats, part of South America’s infamous Lithium Triangle.

The Water Sanctuary: Land Art, Lithium and the True Global Cost of the Green Transition

At over 3,000 metres above sea level, the vast white expanse of the Salinas Grandes salt flats in northern Argentina appears almost extraterrestrial. Beneath this dazzling crust, however, lies one of the world’s largest reserves of lithium — a mineral increasingly essential to modern life. Lithium powers smartphones, laptops, electric vehicles and the battery technologies upon which governments and corporations are staking the future of the global energy transition. Yet the extraction of this supposedly “green” resource has become deeply controversial, particularly among Indigenous communities who depend upon the fragile water systems of the Andean plateau.

It is within this contested landscape that Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno has created El Santuario del Agua (“The Water Sanctuary”), his monumental environmental artwork developed in collaboration with eleven Indigenous communities of the region. The installation transforms the salt flats themselves into both medium and message, drawing attention to the hidden ecological cost of the renewable-energy economy. The project is strongly tied to the Aerocene Foundation and the Indigenous network Red Atacama and due to complete in late 2026.

Saraceno’s land art installation consists of five immense semi-circular structures formed primarily from salt. Their shapes are inspired by apachetas — traditional Andean stone cairns left as offerings to Pachamama, the earth deity central to Indigenous cosmology throughout the Andes. Named Inti, Killa, Ch’aska, Hawcha and Tiqsimuyu, the sculptures reference celestial and spiritual concepts embedded within Andean traditions. Visitors ascend stairways cut into the rear of the forms before reaching elevated viewing platforms overlooking the endless white horizon. When seasonal waters return, the structures will become mirrored as whole in the flooded salt crust – revealing what Saraceno has described as their “hidden half”.

The image is somewhat reminiscent of the luminous sphere of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake. In this, a huge multimedia installation projected onto a large sphere set in the public green space of Memory Grove Park, set in one of Salt Lake City’s seven canyons. But in El Santuario del Agua, (on the Salinas Grandes salt flats, created by volcanic action, 10 million years ago), there is no need for any artificially applied multi media. Here, an often blinding white light is created due to the endless expanses of white, crystalline salt  reflecting the sun, whilst during the wet season a mirror effect also occurs as the rain adds a thin layer of water over the salt flats. Add to this a frequent shimmering of light which creates mirages on the horizon with a golden hour effects at twilight.

As such, the work will exist simultaneously as sculpture, pilgrimage site and environmental protest. It is impossible to separate its aesthetic impact from the political reality beneath it. Lithium extraction in the “Lithium Triangle” — spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Chile — relies not on conventional mining but on the pumping of mineral-rich underground brines into enormous evaporation ponds. Over many months, solar evaporation concentrates the lithium until it can be processed into lithium carbonate for global export. The process consumes vast quantities of water in one of the driest inhabited regions on Earth.

This contradiction lies at the heart of the book Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway. In it, Conway argues that modern civilisation rests upon six essential raw materials: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. His examination of lithium extraction exposes a troubling paradox. Technologies marketed as environmentally sustainable often depend upon industrial processes that are themselves ecologically destructive. In the high-altitude salt flats of South America, the extraction of lithium threatens wetlands, wildlife habitats and ancient water systems relied upon by Indigenous peoples for generations.

Saraceno’s installation visualises precisely this tension. Rather than producing a detached gallery artwork, he situates his practice directly within the affected landscape and alongside the communities most impacted by extraction. The work therefore belongs firmly within the broader traditions of Land Art and environmental art that emerged during the late twentieth century.

The origins of Land Art are often associated with Robert Smithson and his seminal work Spiral Jetty (1970), constructed from rock and earth extending into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Smithson was fascinated by entropy — the gradual decay and transformation of landscapes shaped by industrial activity and geological time. His work frequently explored abandoned mines, quarries and scarred environments where nature slowly reclaimed human intervention. Like Smithson, Saraceno uses salt itself as both material and metaphor, allowing the environment to become an active participant in the artwork.

Environmental critique also underpinned the practice of Agnes Denes. Her famous installation Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982) transformed a landfill site beside Wall Street into a functioning wheat field, confronting viewers with questions of consumption, inequality and ecological neglect. Saraceno similarly juxtaposes modern industry against ancient landscapes and traditional cultures, asking viewers to reconsider what is sacrificed in the pursuit of technological progress.

The monumental scale of El Santuario del Agua also recalls the ambitious interventions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose temporary transformations of landscapes and architecture drew attention to humanity’s relationship with public space and political geography. Meanwhile, the experiential dimension of Saraceno’s elevated viewing platforms evokes comparisons with Walter De Maria and The Lightning Field (1977), where visitors become physically immersed within natural forces and atmospheric conditions.

There are echoes too of James Turrell and his ongoing Roden Crater project in Arizona. Turrell’s work manipulates perception, sky and celestial alignment to create meditative encounters between humanity and the cosmos. Saraceno similarly connects earthly materials with spiritual and astronomical symbolism rooted in Indigenous Andean cosmology.

Yet unlike many earlier Land Artists, Saraceno’s practice is explicitly collaborative and politically engaged. Earlier monumental earthworks were often criticised for imposing artistic visions onto remote landscapes with little reference to local communities. El Santuario del Agua instead attempts to amplify Indigenous voices resisting industrial extraction and water depletion.

In this sense, the installation becomes more than sculpture. It functions as a warning monument for the Anthropocene — an era in which humanity’s technological ambitions increasingly reshape the planet itself. The shimmering beauty of the salt flats conceals a struggle over resources, ecology and survival. Saraceno’s work asks uncomfortable but necessary questions: can the transition to renewable energy truly be considered “green” if it destroys fragile ecosystems elsewhere? And who ultimately bears the environmental cost of modern convenience?

Like the greatest works of Land Art before it, El Santuario del Agua transforms landscape into consciousness. It reminds us that even the clean technologies of our human future remain rooted in the physical extraction from an ancient Earth dating from over 4.5 billion years ago.

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda offers-up the most iconic South American poetic reflections on elemental salt, primarily in his poem “Ode to Salt”. His final lines sums things up beautifully:

“…the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude”.

Primary / Current Sources

Background Reading

Categories: Journaling

Leave a Reply