Celestial Field is a mutation of an installation that I have made a few times now. It keeps evolving and responding to different spaces, kind of like real nature.
I wanted you to be surrounded by these life forms; enveloped by them, from above and below, so that you are standing in the strange space between the ground and the sky.
If you look at the ground flowers, you will see that they are formed like two ovaries coming down into a uterus. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that flowers have ovaries. Flowers are actually very sexual forms; they are the reproductive organs of plants. To me, they represent and embody the idea of reproduction, and fertility and new life — and to me these are very positive ideas.
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| Main parts of a mature flower. |
Just the idea that ‘life lives’ — in any form — is tremendously inspirational to me because this force is inexhaustible. Even in the post-nuclear wasteland surrounding Chernobyl, trees and plants and animals abound. In fact, it is more verdant now than before the disaster. All life in our world is linked together, most of it sharing this fundamental approach to reproducing itself.
When you look at the field, it’s obviously artificial but it references natural forms — humans, plants and flowers. Again, you can see the border between nature and the human world collapsing into one. And in these blended categories we see a beautiful field, which is also slightly scary because it’s all white like the architecture that the corals leave behind when they die on the Barrier Reef.
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| Lab grown rat organs in 2012, photo by Stephan Zimmerman. |
The flowers are intentionally organ sized and when I look at them, I sometimes imagine an organ farm. I would love it if we could grow replacement organs like we grow corn. My mother got cancer at 39 and we would have done anything to have been able to replace her liver. But at the same time ,it kind of looks like industrialised farming where the soil is so dead, and the plants are perfect but are devoid of nutrients. It’s a complicated and aesthetic experience being in this place.