Aqua Paradiso

eco orot

〈Jeju Coral Crochet〉, 2018~2022.

Yarn, polyester fill, paper
Dimension variable

Video: Soft Coral Garden, Jeju Moonsum Bumsum Natural Reserve Site (2021~2022), videographer: Yoon Sanghoon

〈Plastic Mandala〉, 2019~2022.

Ocean plastic waste, sand
Dimension variable

〈Ocean Tears〉, 2021~2022.

Micro ocean plastic waste, glass bottles, wire
Dimension variable

The eco art collective, eco orot, has been creating and practicing for a world where our relationship with nature is orot (meaning enough). Such activities raise the question of the role of art in the era of climate crisis, and are motivated to create empathy with the suffering of nature. By doing so, the collective aims to change the human actions that destroy Earth.
This exhibition introduces the two activities of eco orot. Jeju Coral Crochet is an environmental campaign and community art that delivers the beauty of coral and demands attention to suffering of the marine ecosystem. The phenomenon of coral bleaching and death due to an increase of ocean temperature serves as an indicator to the crisis to the entire marine ecosystem. Coral Crochet is an international grass-root project done by many communities around the world to raise awareness of this crisis, and Jeju Coral Crochet by eco orot especially focuses on soft corals of Jeju. Coral Crochet, in which no fixed patterns or predetermined ways of crochet exist, resembles the organic forms of corals and nature, where the parts and the whole are interconnected.
Plastic Mandala expresses grief towards the suffering of the ocean and the wish to bless the ocean at the same time. The artist and participants pick up plastic pieces by kneeling down and crawling on the sand beach as if engaged in a form of prayer. And they create and disassemble mandala like Tibetan Buddhist monks who make and destroy sand mandala while reciting blessing to all sentient beings. The process of picking tiny plastic pieces one by one is a painstakingly long one, but it is not comparable to the unfathomable amount of suffering that humans caused to the ocean. Mandala, which is finally disassembled and disappears, may seem futile. Owing to the desperateness of the artist who painstakingly repeats and endures this entire process over and over, the message from the work conveys an urgent and earnest entreaty to demand immediate changes in our actions.