Corallium rubrum - Lost Species
Date:
2023
Matériaux:
Terracotta with engobe and gold lustre, hand-blown Murano glass, rope, clips, tubbing, whistle, found plastic objects
Dimensions:
150 x 50 x 5 cm each
Exhibition history:
2024 Villa Les Zéphirs, Middelkerke, Belgium; 2023 Poush, Aubervilliers, France
Courtesy:
Lucy + Jorge Orta
On a Phocaea coin is depected the Mediterranean monk seal swimming with a string of pearls (600 BC). At a first glance, this long colourful chain also optimistically affirms life. Instead of pearls, suspended from the colourful ropes of the necklace are fragile glass spheres, coral branches, and fragments of ocean plastic. The title of this work Corallium rubrum refers to the red coral endemic to the Mediterranean. For millennia, the red gold carried religious and apotropaic meaning, and even today is offered to newly weds and infants as a symbol of good luck. Yets, overfishing and ocean acidification in the Mediterranean have driven the coral to near extinction along with the monk seal and other marine species due to marine pollution, entanglement and the ingestion of micro-plastic particles.