Collection: Sea Saints

The oceans are under considerable threat, as wealthy nation states run out of precious minerals and fossil fuels, and the conflicts on land push mining companies into the deepsea, we see an awfully familiar colonial scene, where wealthy nations carve up the oceans for their own gain, much in the same way Africa was carved up during the Berlin accord.

For many South Africans the deep sea is where the ancestors dwell, and I began to imagine every ancestor in the ocean, what they would look like, and how they might be realised in sacred iconography. Since then, each Sea Saint, has come with it's own backs story, and a kind of Tarot card for living in these times of drowning. 

While deepsea bed mining seems to have no immediately measurable impact on communities inland, I have been asking  the question, how does mining the seabed affect the ancestral spirits of the ocean? Mining the ocean, is for many isiXhosa people, equivalent to mining heaven. 

This body of work, became a five year weekly mediation on what is happening in our oceans, and in our psyches.