DESCRIPTION

Australian-born, California-based sister artists Margaret and Christine Wertheim draw on a unique fusion of mathematics, marine biology, traditional handicraft methods and collective art practice to create large-scale coralline landscapes both beautiful and blighted. Responding to anthropogenic crisis, their soft sculptures and wall-mounted reliefs simulate living reefs using crochet techniques to mimic in yarn the curling, crenelated forms of actual marine organisms. Initiated in 2005, the Crochet Coral Reef project has been exhibited at the 58th Venice Biennale, Helsinki Biennial, Andy Warhol Museum, The Smithsonian Institution and other international venues. In addition to their own reefs, the Wertheims have collaborated with communities in 50 cities and countries to create local Satellite Reefs, to which more than 20,000 people have contributed, constituting one of the largest, longest running participatory art happenings on the planet.

This publication accompanies a museum-wide retrospective at Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany, which gathers the Wertheims’ work over the past 17 years alongside a new Baden-Baden Satellite Reef, the largest to date, encompassing over 40,000 individual coral pieces. With commissioned essays about the scientific, social, environmental, mathematical and communal dimensions of the project, the book provides a critical in-depth look at a stunning example of the power of art and community in the face of climate change. Collaborative, figurative, material, conceptual, artistic, feminist and playful, the Wertheims’ Crochet Coral Reef alerts us to the reality that life on Earth is nothing if not entangled.

REVIEWS

“The sculptures are like force-fields drawing you into their orbit, catalysts for a network of social relations that mimic a reef’s … Gorgeous, absurd and socially productive, these are rare works of art.” —Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times

“What comes through from the book is the sheer magnitude of what the artists are doing. It is such an ambitious project, with roots in so many fields, and involving so much energy, effort and collaboration. I'm totally awestruck.” —Manil Suri, Professor of Mathematics and author of The Age of Shiva

“The Crochet Coral Reef [...] has its utopian quality above all in the fact that a positive project emerges from joint work. It shows the beauty and the power of collective action. Just as a real coral reef is not created by a single unit, but is a combination of thousands of small contributions, so the crocheted coral reef is the product of many hands, many ideas and infinite hours of work.” —Ann-Katrin Gunzel, Kunstforum International

“Collaborative, figurative, material, conceptual, artistic, scientific, feminist and playful, the Crochet Coral Reef alerts us to the reality that life on Earth is nothing if not entangled.” —e-flux

“The Crochet Coral Reef risks making real and fabulated things together to open up still-possible times for flourishing…. Palpable, polymorphous, terrifying and inspiring stitchery.” –Donna Haraway