Simon Faithfull: Fata Morgana

September 10 – November 6, 2021

The Fundación Pablo Atchugarry in Miami is excited to announce a collaboration with ARTSail, a Miami-based multi-faceted platform that connect artists with climate activists, scientists and marine experts to investigate how climate change and man-made pollution are impacting the South Florida waterways and assist them in the creation of tangible outcomes with climate advocacy value.

Featuring a combination of work created by the artist in response to his ARTSail residency, in 2017 and 2018, along with a few earlier works, through a series of photographs and films, the exhibition takes the audience on an aquatic journey spanning from the wetlands of Big Cypress, to the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, all the way to the Nordic Sea and the Adriatic.

The film Re-enactment for a Future Scenario #2: Cape Romano, constitutes the most significant outcome of Faithfull’s residency, and combines footage shot during two separate visits to the remnants of a luxury villa built by a retired oil producer in the late 1970s, and abandoned after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, along with found images of the interior and exterior of the house while it was still standing on dry land.

A figure is seen standing on the half-submerged ruins, his back to us, staring out at the horizon…he seems to be caught in a dream, or better, a nightmare of a post-apocalyptic future, or maybe, as the artist states: “a memory from a future that never quite happened”.

In another video, Self Portrait: Big Cypress, the same figure is now immersed chest-deep in the heart of the Everglades wetlands, the absurdity of the image brings to the fore open-ended questions: the bucolic and yet eerie settings make us wonder whether he is practicing some form of meditation, or has been caught by a sudden flash-flood episode.

Throughout Faithfull’s oeuvre, nature and the landscape within which the artist chooses to perform his actions play a critical role that goes beyond that of a simple stage or a source of inspiration: a tree, a body of water, or an abandoned man-made structure become the de-facto collaborators with whom Faithfull shares the title of co-creator.

Humor and the absurd are recurrent strategies in Faithfull’s practice, and they often mitigate the sense of dooms-day scenarios that descriptions of his work might bring to mind. Whether he is clinging to a pole in the middle of the sea, as in Self Portrait: Florida Bay; or hanging from a tree in the desert landscape of Earthscape no. 1: Wadi Rum; or nonchalantly taking a walk on the seabed at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea in Going Nowhere 2, Faithfull exposes the frailty of the human condition and mankind’s hubris, without falling into the trap of existential anguish.

As the artist stated at the end of our second Dome House expedition: “We find ourselves in a very strange moment and I think oddly enough that’s also full of absurdity and humor…”: his vision, much better than any words, can truly express the precariousness of our fate and that of our planet.