Hypogeum: from the Greek hypo (under) and Gaia (mother earth) is an underground temple or tomb. History states that the Azores were first populated by the Portuguese, yet recent archaeological discoveries of Hypogea suggest that there was an earlier human presence on the islands. Evidence is scarce, and so fantasy blooms around these findings. Clementine Keith-Roach departs from these archaeological speculations and links them to her personal experience to excavate an area of land in the island of São Miguel, digging down into the stratified layers of volcanic history. Similar to others from Iron Age Mediterranean cultures, the Hypogea found on the Azores are said to strongly resemble an Etruscan necropolis outside Rome, which the artist visited earlier this year. On this site, the entire necropolis is chiselled out of a layer of volcanic tuff, petrified ash from a prehistoric eruption. The Hypogea function as houses for the dead, stocked with carved replicas of the tools and objects needed for the afterlife. There is superimposition of temporalities here: the everyday routines of human life, the perpetuity of the afterlife and the vastness of geological time. Clementine uses exhumed earth to create a series of casts representing fragments of her body and contemporary objects relevant to her journey to Azores (rather than an eternal afterlife).