Silence as a Room#1_R-membered
The Silence as a Room#1_R-membered artwork is an archival entry based on the echo of human presence — how we shape and are shaped by the earth. Through acts of making, unmaking, and remembering, I explore what remains when silence meets historical trace in and of the land. Earth… and when the land itself becomes the storyteller.
Silence as a Room#1 of #5_R-membered (as monument)
We leave traces of ourselves behind — here, there, long ago (say… 10,000–195,000 years ago), and even further back, some 300,000 years.
These traces convey our stories — the story of humans (and others) traversing the earth.
What remains, we gather and piece together into a version of history that defines us and shapes our identity. Fragments of a past.
Beneath the waves, across deserts, through forests, and in the mountains, Homo sapiens have endured, created, destroyed — and created again.
Silence as a Room#1_R-membered engages with these traces — the fragments left by an artwork situated in the Karoo desert, outside the small town of Richmond, Northern Cape.
The Silence #1 (https://coral4art.co.za/silence-as-a-room/ )work created between 2022 and 2025, this land art sculpture drew on the slow, deliberate process of hand-making — a counterpoint to the mechanical and industrial. The work was ultimately demolished by the same machine (a grader) it invoked as ‘other’ – a symbol of capital and industry.
Through this act of demolishing what makes us comfortable, the work speaks/spoke back to ideas of colonialization by machine, and the domination of earth once it becomes known as land — a commodity. The first in a 5-part series, Silence as a Room offered a panacea to the noise of the world: political, socio-cultural, and economic. It was a quiet salve — soothing the ecological and indigenous earth that echoes the Feminine as mother, even as she is named, resourced, and outsourced for her richness.
This archaeologia — from the ancient arkhaiologia, “the study of origins” — reflects on the emergence of something less ancient, yet rooted in time. A work born from Silence, turned to disquiet through those that could not-see, and could not-know. Its eventual destruction in early 2025 became part of its story — a cycle of making, unmaking, and remembrance. R-membered. Silence as a Room#1 of #5, a womb in the earth once – now an archaeological site determining who we are. The skeleton of the work remains, Silence secrets hidden beneath. The work r-membered through the art of broken things.
From its remnants, I place into this sculptural archive, its memory as a work constructed and sculpted from the earth in ancient lands and Silence#1 archaeological finds that will continue to engage and r-member the womb-like Silence – this time in the Cradle of Mankind. For more: https://coral3=4art.co.za
Each piece of Silence ‘rubble’, a piece of Silence – an archive in itself.
Each piece tells its own story,…and the story of the collective…
Silence amulets retrieved from the wreckage – Amulets much like talismans are imbued with the power, magic, and/or belief of the person/owner; institution, culture, or group who use these to shift energies; ideas of good and evil, or protection from that which one needs protection from. From the dawn of man as a conscious being, (he) has found ways to make meaning of his surroundings, his world, and the objects he associates himself with. Amulets have been imbued with ‘power’ and are portrayed as the protector for the dissolution of evil.
Amulets were engaged to activate the Silence in Silence as a Room#1 of #5 – some have been retrieved while others remain buried in the wreckage outside of Richmond.
Akin to fetichism, the amulets’ material is also of significance; and in this case, the use of the red clay fired in a veld-made oven; is the same red earth that created the bricks specially designed for Silence as a Room. The red clay also forms the plaster used to finish the built aspect of the construction. The red earth, which the artist worked by hand or with basic implements, also holds significance to the artist as it has a strong association with the Feminine and the relationship to the Earth.
