by courtney mattison
2019
glazed stoneware + porcelain
213 x 635 x 55 cm (84 x 250 x 22 in)
This hand-sculpted ceramic wall relief is comprised of bleached coral forms branching horizontally in a fractal-inspired, book-matched pattern across the gallery wall. Clusters of gelatinous white polyps appear to have had their supportive skeletons dissolved by acidic seawater. The title Malum Geminos, meaning “evil twins” in Latin, pays homage to a statement by the Honorable Jane Lubchenco, PhD at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen referring to ocean acidification as the “equally evil twin” of climate change threatening coral reefs, caused by carbon dioxide emissions dissolving into the sea. The skeletal nature of this design also references Dr. Lubchenco’s other profound comparison of ocean acidification as “osteoporosis of the sea.”
This work was commissioned for ‘Fragile Earth’ at the Florence Griswold Museum in 2019 and is currently on tour in ‘Iris Van Herpen. Sculpting the Senses’ by MAD Paris.
Learn more in the Fragile Earth exhibition catalog by the Florence Griswold Museum.
Photo © Paul Mutino for the Florence Griswold Museum during the 2019 exhibition "Fragile Earth," curated by Dr. Jenny Parsons.
Photo © Courtney Mattison
Photo © Paul Mutino for the Florence Griswold Museum
Photo © Paul Mutino for the Florence Griswold Museum