Undersea Colonies

Alisa Golden

60 x 43.5 inches

2018

ARTIST STATEMENT

Vivid colors in a newspaper article opened a world previously unknown to me. Deep in the Pacific Ocean, where plates collide below the cold, earth’s kitchen builds lava chimneys, black smokers, and a hot hearth at the Juan de Fuca ridge. Here, tube worms, palm worms, and deep-sea creatures co-exist as they did long before us and will, if we let them, live long after. Already elsewhere, people have disregarded similar life and packed probing tools, intent on dredging for minerals, claiming magnesium, cobalt, and gold for their own. While humans are just dots on a timeline, we still have the choice to impact or respect our collective home. The fragmented text shifts and collides as follows:

We will not

be planting

a flag on

Juan de Fuca ridge.

The plates rattled

before dinosaurs.

The volcano will spew

after robots.

Tick tock.

Tectonic.

MATERIALS

Cotton, silk, linen thread, metallic paint, oil-based ink, black tea, dye, printed cotton

GUIDE BY CELL NUMBER

To hear the artist speak about the artwork, call (703) 520-6404 and enter 2185 followed by the # sign.