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Diffusion of Memory
Sculpture, Photography
2026-Ongoing
Size: 1m x 1.5m x 3m
Materials: Glass Cylinder, Sargasso-Seaweed Biomaterial, reclaimed and welded Steel, Iron, and Aluminium, Water, Aloe Vera Extract, Light
Wien
Project Description
Photographs
Photographs
A sculpture and photographic series exploring exploring the boundaries between healing and toxicity through environmental change.
Built from reclaimed parts of machines which extract Sargasso Seaweed from the beaches in the Caribbean, the sculpture investigates histories of colonial extraction and intervention within the landscape.
The seaweed growth has greatly increased with global warming, and becomes toxic when it washes ashore and rots. In Antigua the machines which remove it destroy fragile coastal ecosystems which have adapted over time to the changing environment.
The metal frame is covered in a biomaterial skin made from Sargassum and local plants with healing properties (preserved in a glass vessel at its center) which warp and dissolve through humidity, revealing the skeletal machinery beneath.
The sculpture becomes a technological fossil in which memory is dispersed across what remains, a body of both extraction and renewal, asking how a landscape and the memories it carries might heal.
The photographs document a character navigating the speculative world of the sculpture, though in the images it no longer remains, replaced by a living, human body. Shot on film and exposed multiple times, the images merge the organic biomaterial forms with portraits of an Antiguan woman, depicting the memory of the landscape through its actors, materials, and agents.
The biomaterials in the images have since dissolved into the earth, where they help fertilise the growth of the same healing plants the sculpture contains. All that is left is a narrative of transformation, breathing through.