Unseen Foundations installation

Informed by the artist’s Venetian origins, where the city is sustained by an inverted forest of submerged timber piles, the work develops through material research into instability. Encaustic and modelling wax shift between fused, layered, and eroded states, registering pressure, sediment, and time. A latent arboreal structure emerges within the surface, suggesting an internal forest that both supports and unsettles what is visible.

This condition is mirrored in the sculptural figure: a fragile child whose root-like limbs evoke both dependency and adaptation. As Venice endures through rising sea levels and cyclical tides, the figure embodies a parallel state; vulnerability as exposure, and resilience as the capacity to persist within continual change.

Stability is not fixed but contingently maintained. What holds is not permanence, but an ongoing negotiation between erosion and endurance.

Installation: Unseen Foundations
Mixed media installation

Panel:
Encaustic on wood panel
60 X 84 cm

Sculpture:
Modelling wax and tree branches
Approx. 25 cm high