Like snakes, the roots of trees, coil themselves from rock and sand | expo
(March 22 - April 17, 2023)
In their solo exhibition in Studio STUK Manhattan, artist duo Elise Eeraerts and Roberto Aparicio Ronda immerse you in the world of swamps and wetlands, where fables and facts intersect.
And, like snakes, the roots of trees
Coil themselves from rock and sand,
Stretching many a wondrous band
- fragment from Goethe’s Faust, when a wandering light (Ignis Fatuus) emerges in the story
Wandering lights and bog bodies, the swamp (bog) is often the symbolic setting for sinister events in both historical and contemporary stories; a place of mischief and mystery. At the same time, wetlands bustle with life and harbor a diverse ecosystem that plays an important role in the context of climate change as carbon sinks and storm buffers.
For their exhibition at Studio STUK Manhattan, Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda developed a landscape of spatial and audiovisual elements inspired by the Kirkpatrick Marsh (MD, USA). In this marsh, scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are studying how plant and animal species respond to fluctuations in CO2, temperature, nitrogen (N) and sea level rise. Global climate changes are simulated there in anticipation of a new reality.
Awe-inspiring images of abundant fauna and flora in the wetlands cross with the excitement of fables and anxieties of science predicament in this thought-provoking installation that gets under your skin.
- part of Warm Alarm festival
