MARE MAGNVM
12 Channel Video Installation
30 minutes
60 x 60 x 10 feet / 1829 x 1829 x 305 cm
2021
MAREMAGNVM is a panoramic installation featuring a stylized, monochromatic sea populated by 14 boats, each with its own unique collection of characters caught in a perpetual loop of movement. Every 30 minutes, the characters arrive back where they began, only to continue on endlessly. The installation is accompanied by an ambient cello composition, amplifying the weight of the scene. The characters are larger than life-size, standing frozen in their stances, with some men, some women, some elderly, and some pregnant. Their boats are constructed of various found objects, like wood, oil drums, and tires, pointing to real-life scenes of migration across bodies of water.
The name MAREMAGNVM comes from the Latin for Great Sea, a term used by the Romans to describe the Mediterranean. However, the word mare has a more complicated history, also being associated with evil spirits and terrors in various cultures, including Old English and Old Irish. Today, the waters of the Mediterranean and other sites of mass human movement reflect an ongoing horror, as millions of migrants flee war, instability, and climate change. MAREMAGNVM does not refer to a single event or wave of migration, but rather expands our view to encompass the migrant experience as a whole. Through its panoramic experience, the installation forces viewers to confront the all-encompassing struggle of crossing borders in our times, reminding us of a future where rising waters will push unprecedented numbers of people away from the places they call home. MAREMAGNVM both describes a reality that is already here and reads it as an omen of one that is soon to come.
MARE MAGNVM was produced with the technical support of MAD LABS.
Music interpreted by Jonathan Gerstner.
Exhibitions
MARE MAGNVM
Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid - Spain
December 11, 2021 - February 12, 2022
MARE MAGNVM does not refer only to a single or specific event. No information is given on the characters’ origin or their personal history. Their faces are not visible, covered by papier-mâché masks typical from Peñafiel’s native Ecuador, that both humanize and de-personify these characters. The identity of these people remains temporally and culturally ambiguous; their unspecific costuming transforms them into archetypal representatives of any Diaspora population.
Mare Magnum (Great Sea in Latin) is the name Romans gave to the Mediterranean Sea. Although the artist constructs fictional characters, he points to real life scenes from the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, and from so many other sites of migration across bodies of water. The exhibition describes a reality that is already here, and is also an omen of one that is soon to come.
Through video, animation and photography, the artist aims in this project to develop a variety of visual narratives in which he creates characters based on real stories of his own and of those close to him. In these narratives the artist weaves an alternative reality that reflects the results of migrational processes, using indirect references to contemporary historical events. The idea is to transmute these real stories into fictitious imagery that is universal at the same time, always keeping the essence of the original characters and situations.
This exhibition is part of a wider body of work eponymously titled MARE MAGNVM, which includes the ongoing exhibition MARE MAGNVM: La llegada currently on show at our space in calle Madera, in which the 81 characters that appear in the video installation are presented.