Commissioned specifically for the group exhibition WE ARE OCEAN_Blaupause, a triad of hydrogel panels was created, into which tufts of fresh eelgrass (Latin: Zostera) were meticulously embedded in marine-based hydrogels. The panels blend into their natural substrate on the shores of the Baltic Sea: sea sand. The research was scientifically supervised by biologist Dorit Visbek-Liebers from the German Oceanographic Museum and Prof. Dr Thorsten B. Reusch, Head of the Research Unit Marine Evolutionary Ecology at GEOMAR in Kiel, who kindly provided fresh eelgrass for the works.

The three panels were later joined by a selection of smaller pieces made by students during a workshop with the artist at the Windland Regional School on Rügen, Germany. Together, they formed a constellation of floating-like “ocean slices”, in which captured eelgrass tufts and their surrounding meadows gradually biodegraded over the course of the exhibition.

The protection and conservation of eelgrass is of significant importance in the context of the interconnected biodiversity and climate crises. Eelgrass meadows are hotspots of biodiversity, important reservoirs of organic carbon in sediments, and sites of significant carbon accumulation. Yet they have experienced major global declines in response to increasing environmental pressures.

Zostera is part of Gelata, an artistic research project that departed from the material characteristics of slime: wet, sticky, transparent and elastic. Gel, mucus and slime share similar characteristics—physically, scientifically and poetically. Slime has been present at the very essence of life, from the primordial ooze to the possible gooey dominance of a future shaped by climate catastrophe. Slime holds, protects, nurtures and guides; it connects an organism to its environment while also forming a viscosity between past and present.

This research constitutes an artistic endeavour that invites a poetic remembrance of our symbiotic kinship with aquatic ecosystems on a deep-time, geo- and biochemical scale.

• – Commissioned by: ARTPORT_making waves for WE ARE OCEAN Blaupause Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
• – Technical support: Carlo Crovato
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