Merkaba: Vehicle of Light is a citizen science project which explores the biodiversity and ecology within a 1 km radius of my home in urban Johannesburg.
During this site-specific project, sustainably collected specimen are photographed in studio against a clean background, isolating them from the context of their environment. These neatly classified specimens are of scientific “value” for their documentation of the biodiversity of the area and accompany the printed works. However, by deconstructing the ecology of the landscape, I begin to question our perception of the natural world, mimicking our experience of nature as commodity, and resource removed from its “natural environment”.
Inspired by observation and discovery, the isolated objects are reunited and transformed into hyper-collages that illustrate the connections between fauna and flora and the cataclysmic implications of the loss of biodiversity; not only for humans, but for the Natural World.
These large-format works are exhibited alongside a species list, accompanied by their taxonomy and a QR code linking to further information on iNaturalist. The latter is an online platform used by scientists to track biodiversity data as they work on the Half-Earth project and other conservation studies. My hope is
