Un-Earth
Pictures by Roni Cnaani
In this project I deals with the relationship between humans and the sea, and the way we pollute it and ourselves.
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I directly look at the reality. The sea is not the same sea; it is high, intimidating, polluted, and contaminated. I dive into the depths of the sea - the subconscious, observing, listening, and collecting parts from there that I am flooding up to the surface - to consciousness.
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These parts are represented by glass surfaces that I collect, break into pieces, and create endless structures that commemorate the current crisis between us and the sea. Doubt perpetuates the fragments as glaciers that disappear from the world; doubt creates an utopian state of unity between the subconscious and the ecology that is frighteningly changing before our eyes.
I place the glass fragments on fabric dyed with cyanotype solution, a 19th-century printing technique. The technique works by exposing a light-sensitive solution to light on a painted surface. Wherever the surface is blocked from light by an image or object, the surface remains colorless, and wherever the light hits around that blockage, the surface reacts and turns blue.
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What led me to focus on the sea and the crisis of the oceans started with watching films featuring my childhood heroes: Sylvia Earle, David Attenborough, and Jacques Cousteau. Watching their films inspired me to dream that I would someday explore the oceans just like they did. So I built my dream, but in my own field - textiles. I researched cyanotype, and to this day, I continue to discover new things about it. As I explore it, I explore myself and the sea.
