Pond; Fogcatcher

In her practice, Paula de Solminihac observes invisible relationships of mutual symbiosis between different forms of existence. Fogcatcher is created in response to the Atacama desert fog in Chile, a thick fog which forms over the Pacific Ocean. She references a system whereby a net was created to catch the moisture droplets from the air and draw them into the earth, ensuring an essential water resource in one of the world’s most arid regions. The installation also includes a column of ceramic worms and a black ceramic pond. These reference the invisible architecture formed by earthworms in the soil. Worms’ circulation creates storage for groundwater constituting another invisible water source and the world’s largest reserve of fresh water. The worms created through collaborative workshops symbolise what Solminihac refers to as an 'energetic cycle where humans and nature constitute a whole'.

'So if the lesson that ceramics give us allows us to stop thinking about opposites, the next step could be to think that these opposites are connected to each other and that if I follow the branches of the tree of life, I will be able to realise that everything is interrelated and that they are not only related but also dependent on each other.'