Where Bougainvilleas Bloom Ceaselessly
The work explores the material properties of salt – its power to erode, preserve and extend time - framed in the mineral’s defining role in Lebanon’s history, from celebrated ‘white gold’ of the Phoenician era, to chemical behind the 2020 Beirut Blast.
The installation engages with the notion of ‘borrowed time’, and proposes a fictive outcome for a village under threat, where the sea responds to a foreign cloud by sending a giant wave to protect the place from destruction, coating it in its salt.
Sea salt crystals (Lebanese coast) * Salt, NH₄NO₃ pigment * Manganese glass (Villa Linda Sursock) - 19th Century/2020 * Unidentifiable rock (Lebanese coast)
Bougainvillea – preserved * Sandstone rock, Limestone rock, Concrete aggregate rock (Lebanese coast) - 2.6 Millenia / 20th Century * ‘Safad’ (oyster) shells, Pottery fragment (Mediterranean Sea) – speculation Roman era * Plastic carrier bag, Glasswax, plaster, iron powder, clay slip, concrete block, steel tube, single channel projection and audio