Hat tip to the Alaska Dispatch for mentioning Italian-born but Alaska-based installation artist Paola Pivi’s newest art work which features a twin engine Piper Seneca suspended in air by its wing tips that actually rolls.
The aircraft is held horizontal by parallel steel columns and it quietly rotates forward, tail over nose and by 306 degrees. According to the Alaska Dispatch, the sight is unsettling because “aircraft are so seldom represented in this way it leads the observer to ask (either aloud or to herself): ‘Why would she do that?’”
Its not the first time that Pivi has used aviation as a theme in her art. In a 2006 instillation, she placed an upside down Wessex 558 (helicopter) in the middle of an Austrian square and called the piece: “A helicopter upside down in a public square.” It was meant as a tribute to the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart but most viewers probably missed the connection.
For more about Paola Pivi’s work, visit her personal webpage here and for more about “How I Roll” plus some still shots, check here, here or here.