TRINITY
Barcelona, 2025.

In TRINITY, Fairmined gold and trinitite, materials that represent extreme temporalities, coincide in the same piece. Gold, 4500 million years old, formed before our planet, and trinitite, a nuclear waste known as the ‘first mineral created by humans’, originated in the first nuclear detonation just 80 years ago. Fairmined gold comes from small, responsibly mined Latin American mines, while trinitite symbolises the moment when humans began to transform the geological conditions of the planet, giving rise to the Anthropocene theory.

This piece, which is part of the exhibition ‘Matter Matters’ at the Barcelona Design Museum, functions as an interface between geological and human time, inviting us to rethink the very word ‘Nature’ which, as the philosopher Timothy Norton says, is approached from an anthropocentric viewpoint, as something that is elsewhere and is something other than human. It reminds us to maintain a critical spirit in a fast-paced world and, as the chemical engineer of the Energaia Institute of the University of Zaragoza, Alicia Valero, points out, that ‘on a finite planet, there is no room for infinite desires’.

Trinity nuclear trial, July 16th, 1945, New Mexico, USA.

TRINITY ring. "Matter Matters", Disseny Hub Barcelona Museum 2025.