Requiem (Plegaria); THE CLOUD IN THE OCEAN

Yoan Capote, Requiem (Plegaria), 2019-2021.
For Cubans the sea represents a double isolation, geographic as well as political. To this day people are not free to leave the island country, which has been embroiled in an ideological struggle with its powerful neighbour, the U.S., for more than 60 years. Thousands of Cubans have died trying to cross the relatively short stretch of sea that separates the island from the coast of Florida in precarious, overcrowded vessels. Hence, a seascape can also be understood as the barrier that keeps people imprisoned against their will; choppy waters becoming the ominous image of a graveyard.

'In 2019, during my first solo exhibition in Italy, I was deeply impacted by two things: The first was the art of museums and churches with their stunning frescoes and altars; the second was the migratory drama and the human conflict that surrounded the Mediterranean sea at that time. The same day I returned from visiting the Uffizi gallery I was watching the news on TV about the suffering of migrants and the ecological conflict Europe is facing. I could not help but perceive many analogies with what we have experienced in the Caribbean, expanding my analysis towards a panorama of more universal and global problems.'—Yoan Capote

Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, THE CLOUD IN THE OCEAN, 2022.
THE CLOUD IN THE OCEAN explores connections between water, time, heat, silica and silicone, and our own beginnings as watery beings. A network of glass forms transports water and air through a series of pathways. They create a timed organism that uses water to transfer heat from a computer running a simulation of an ocean floor, to a tank holding a soft robotic manta ray.

'The computer generates heat as a by-product of its efforts to render the simulation and is cooled by water. This warmer water becomes an environment for the artificial manta housed in its amniotic world, coupling organism and machine, chip and fetus.

The story of our transformation takes place in water, inside the amnion, a bubble of protective fluid. We have no memory of this place, but our body remembers. Our middle ear retains a record of this moment, vestigial features of our time as fish. This transformation from sea to land also owes itself to silica, one of the most common substances on Earth, formed when massive stars explode. This star dust permeates our bodies and all aspects of the natural and built world through a variety of geological, technological and biological transformations. Silica deposits, transported by the water of subterranean rivers, rest deep in the earth, made solid over time.'—Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson