orientations : a margin of agar-agar II (2001)

An installation of 10,000 litres of agar-agar on a gallery floor

 

Floating Chimeras, Contemporary Asian Art, Edsvik Art and Culture Centre, Sollentuna, Sweden, 2001

 

 

An installation of a pool of transparent agar-agar, in solid state, that filled a gallery floor. During the exhibition, the audience was invited to participate by walking into this part turgid/ part squishy surface, leaving behind their footprints.  

 

After 2 days, the footprints that were left behind were filled with coloured agar-agar in a short-lived attempt to record the audience’s presence. The act of recording usually implies an attempt to achieve some degree of permanence; the attempt to record using an ephemeral material (a seemingly absurd and futile act) intentionally negates the possibility of permanence in order to highlight the state of transience.  Within 10 days of the exhibition, the entire work had to be disposed of due to decomposition and infestation of insects.  

 

*This work is dedicated to every adult who was not allowed to play with their food as a child.​

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