Silent World, 2019

Silent World is an immersive spatial installation binding together the cosmic presence of the sun with water vapor. It consists of a circular steamy pond embedded within the floor of the museum, upon which a video projector beams visuals of the sun. The footage of solar rays is shot from underwater, yet the visitor gazes down at this mist-laden imagery from above. In terms of spatial orientation, the installation proposes an inverse scenario—with the sun occupying a submerged position, shining up from the deep. The conceptual gravity of the gesture is heightened by this reversal. As well as turning down into up, and up into down, fire appears to be present in water. Everything has undergone a sea change. The work borrows its title from an early underwater film by Jacques Cousteau, the first of its kind to bring moving images from the ocean depths to screen.

Though his earliest dives were largely funded by oil companies, eager to develop underwater exploration technologies for resource extraction, Cousteau’s footage would ultimately do more than serve corporate interests—transforming humanity’s perception of the ocean, revealing its beauty, fragility, and complexity. His films and documen­taries sparked a shift from seeing the sea as merely a reservoir of wealth to recognizing it as a world worth protecting. This paradox highlights a deeper truth: our earliest visual culture of the deep sea, which now inspires conservation, was born from the very forces that threaten it. And while that sudden access to images of the deep, consolidated by the high-definition documentaries of today, might tempt us to believe we know this place, Silent World instead concedes to the ocean as unfathomable.