Mother of Pearl

Throughout history, pearls have sparked legends and stories of beauty, mysticism, war, and value. Riverine pearls have always been a major coveted item; it is even said the Romans conquered Britain for pearls. They were (and are) a source of extensive pearl industry along river banks, including in the Netherlands once. The most famous local pearl-producing mussel has long gone extinct, though it remains a red-listed species in neighbouring countries.

Mussels are vital to a riverine ecosystem, being able to filter water at an astonishing rate. At the same time, this makes them extremely vulnerable as every substance in the water passes through their bodies. With their long lifespan, their decline is not immediately noticeable. Yet when elders die off without a new generation to follow them up, the riverine ecosystem topples like a house of cards.

In Mother Of Pearl, empty freshwater mussels found on the banks of the Amstel River are given care after violence. Their fragile shells are meticulously reproduced in glass to craft them an impenetrable barrier, a final safe space. A little light illuminates their pearlescent skin, drawing attention to their starting pearls. The artistic process is a study of their being, an act of witnessing, a testament to their past suffering. As an installation, the shells are the ghosts of their extinct ancestors and their living siblings still enduring a battle underwater.  What lies at the heart of every starting pearl? How hard must the mussels work to survive? And what happens when their metabolism is too disturbed to clean water?

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Mother of Pearl is developed for my solo exhibition Between No Longer and Not Yet. It forms the start of the long-term research project “Hydroformations”, aimed at developing artistic knowledge with, by, and through the Dutch river delta. The exhibition is part of a series of solo projects in which Zone2Source invites artists to use the exhibition and the park as a living laboratory for co-creation and collective research, together with with human and other-than-human actors of the Amstelpark. In doing so, the public becomes part of both the results as well as the artist's artistic processes through various public programmes.