2021.
Sculptural Installation
Black alumnium foil, Japanese paper, anneal steel wire,
sedimentary and metamorphic rock drill cores,
steel rods, glass microscope slides with irridescent film,
inorganic dry pigment, bismuth, wax medium.
Various dimensions
The grand course of existence is a voluptuous balance between gentleness and firmness as a concerted inseparable force of one single unceasing interplay of movement. The firmness draws its substance from minerals and metals, and the gentleness from the lighter constituents - water, air, biomass. Biomass is the sum total of the fundamental constituent of all living organisms. The various forces that shape us into being is an enigmatic cosmology of resilience; resilience is a function of yielding and resisting over time to the interplay of various energetic fluctuations, a storming multiplicity of invisible forces.
In current discourses in Earth and planetary sciences, it is purported that the core and mantle of this planet gradually became hotter and denser over the course of its lifetime - a phenomenon termed as the Iron Catastrophe. That event led to lighter materials such as silicates, water and air to rise to the surface while heavier minerals and metals sank towards the center. Heavier materials uphold lighter ones because of a buoyancy gradient. This planetary differentiation, this sieving process through density, is reflected in the structural hierarchy for many living beings; our skeletons are predominantly made of minerals and other inorganic materials while our flesh is mostly water and biomass. It is a misconception to believe that minerals and metals are inert and static. Rather, they are careened and folded into a ceaseless dynamic flow through the folds and creases of this planet; firstly through the core, and then meandering their way into our bones and bloodstream to finally return to the planet after the body decays. It is because of the precise precarious balance of these minerals and metals that our thoughts can activate our bones and muscles; the action of muscles and synapses in our brains are regulated by sodium, magnesium and potassium, allowing beings to move and dynamically exchange with their environment. We are very much little planets roaming the universe.
There is much we do not understand about the complexity of existence. Perhaps those gaps in our comprehension, those subterranean enigmas, are potent spaces for musing about questions that do not hunger for an answer.