(The Word is on Flowers)
2022 – Multimedia Installation
The research for While We Sink (The Word is on Flowers) starts with five black and white drawings that translate images of the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called plastic continent. The marine debris is an accumulation of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that has reached a size similar to Texas, and that researchers and activists who observe it, describe with names such as „The Soup“.
The work is mainly inspired by a series of conferences presented at the beginning of the pandemic by the Riga Biennale, in which ideas and positions on the concept of the future were presented in different thematic focuses by thinkers such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos, CAConrad, Federico Campagna, Jack Halberstam and Astrida Neimanis. Irina Novarese’s cartography, or rather her vision of a possible mapping of these mobile islands, the harmful remains of our daily actions, is developed through different elements and materials, trying to approach a more optimistic vision.
The installation is composed by different media integrated into the narrative of a journey, translating the dynamic map into a visual and semantic form. Textiles, illuminated texts and ceramics describe a darkly threatening present and the utopian possibility of reacting positively by keeping flower seeds in time capsules to celebrate our disappearance.
The research and production for WHILE WE SINK was supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds NEUSTART KULTUR Auslage 2. (Germany)