The Dual Aqua
Inspired by ideas of environmental justice, this work presents a small world contained inside a wooden box, where human ambition and the forces of nature are bound together in a fragile balance. The sea here serves as a metaphor for shared human struggle—each life carries its own story that deserves to be seen, remembered, and passed on.
Visually and thematically, a dominant white wave surges through the space. It’s a movement of beautiful violence, as the wave like a giant hand threatening to engulf the houses on the upper half while the lower section has already been torn to its core, showing the skeletal fossils of the housing structures, ghosts of a world from yesterday. The scene suggests that while its unseen inhabitants may come from different backgrounds, they share a common fate determined by the sea. It speaks to water's dual nature, as both a source of life and purification, and an unpredictable force of absolute destruction.
Process
The form of container references Joseph Cornell’s box works, as im very interested in his approach of using box as a metaphor to allude man’s arrogant desire to “collect” and “organize” nature. It also serves as something to be passed down, a materialized piece of allegory, or a fragile memory. (Here, the box becomes both vessel and metaphor—a reminder of humankind’s desire to enclose and comprehend nature, yet also a fragile reliquary of shared struggle. )
From the debris, a single hand emerges, on the very top right corner of the box, disguising as a wave. In a way it invokes the literary concept of baptism—a moment poised between drowning and rebirth. Crucially, the hand is crafted from the same material as the wave, suggesting a complex narrative: it represents not only a universal struggle for survival but also hints that humanity may be an extension of the same destructive natural cycle.