PEQUOD 2017
Installation
Mattress, bottom sheet, comforter, pillow, made of 936 plastic bags
Nautical map, Vinyl Text
Dimension Variable
SVA Open Studios Exhibition New York
Curated by Keren Moscovitch
Hans Erni Museum Lucerne
Curated by Heinz Stahlhut
Named after the doomed whaler in Moby Dick, Pequod transforms 936 collected plastic bags into a bed, a fragile domestic vessel adrift in an ocean of waste. Mattress, duvet, and pillows made of translucent plastic evoke comfort undermined by contamination. A nautical map of Nantucket – the island from which the whaling ship Pequod set sail - and a legal notice printed on American shopping bags highlight the absurdity of consumer safety rhetoric in the context of environmental collapse. By conncting the intimacy between personal habitat and the ocean, Jacomella Bonola highlights the deep and inextricable link between human life and well-being and the health of the oceans. Pequod is both elegy and indictment, a monument to the drowned future of material excess.
Credits: © Patricia Jacomella Bonola