"Sea Beds and Signals" @Cube Space, Berkeley, CA
Sea beds and Signals is a site-specific installation composed of elements that allude to oceanic environments, pollution and a growing environmental risk. Beauty, subtlety, fragility, ethereality, peaceful coexistence against ugliness, confusion, careless intervention and destruction. A transformation of a potential intimate and inviting experience to one only viewing from afar: a-not-inviting nest where one should otherwise feel protected.
Seagrass and seaweed from the Pacific Ocean, a found fishing net from the coasts of Bengal and a drawing based on physiographic charts of the oceans suggest that individuals separated by geography and worldviews remain linked by the same global issues in the face of current sea changes. Drawing with overlapped charts from both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean reflects a confused emotional and psychological space.
The use of very fragile elements like emergency blankets which suggest refuge have lost their meaning. Painted and embroidered with sea grass are now torn apart offering no protection or safety anymore; constantly shifting lines that connect and separate, marks like letters beckoning signals of emergency, codes and charts that need to be decoded. Organic and manmade materials transmit messages of fragility, beauty, connectivity that need to be heard.
Cube Space is a project by the Berkeley Civic Arts Program, curated by independent curator Demetri Broxton.