Ecosistema, MOCA, Jacksonville, FL 2020-2021.
Photo by Doug Eng.

Ecosistema, Turner Museum, Chico, CA, 2024

Ecosistema, Yellow House Gallery, Jacksonville, FL 2019-2020.

Ecosistema

Hand-cut screenprint on Mylar, UV ink, Florescent and Black Lights, dimensions variable in installation, 2019-ongoing

Two years after Sistema, in which I researched the coral reef’s life cycle, there had been a radical change in the country’s political discourse; I responded with Eco Sistema, a meditation on coral’s and democracy’s own death.

This composite image depicts two moments in the installation: one, with bright fluorescent lights, illuminating hundreds of glacial-white screenprinted and hand-cut coral-like shapes; the second, when the stark white environment is suddenly darkened, and UV lights illuminate the invisible-ink text written on the coral—the deconstructed ten amendments of the Bill of Rights appear as if floating in the space, unmoored.

Silent, simple, and built up over centuries, tiny coral lived, died, and calcified to build the ground on which viewers are standing.

Eco Sistema’s two starkly different modes allow viewers to witness the decay and bleaching caused by ocean warming and acidity changes.