Clear and fresh,
forms are understood with the eye;
murmuring, murmuring,
sounds are understood with the ear;
in the infinite, an emptiness arises:
it is understood with the spirit;
in the depths, a disquiet arises:
it is understood with the heart.
— Liu Zongyuan
Suspended in an era of profound transformation — from the decline of fossil fuels to the uncertain promise of renewable energy — contemporary society is caught in a constant drift between past and future, endlessly chasing its own white whale: infinite energy to satisfy its relentless hunger for growth and consumption.
The Mediterranean Sea — historically a cradle of civilizations, a space of exchange, migration, conflict, and coexistence — is represented as a flat and functional surface. In this shift, its layered depths and cultural richness are overlooked, its complexity abstracted in the name of control and productivity.
This drawing reflects on the transformation of the Mediterranean from a living, multidimensional environment into a mapped, measured, and increasingly industrialized zone. The sea becomes a grid, a resource field. The ecological and symbolic depths of the Mediterranean are flattened, both literally and metaphorically, under the weight of extractive logics.
The artwork explores this tension through a static, contemplative image — one that captures the fragile balance between presence and erasure, between what is perceived and what is lost in translation among different layeros on a paper. Without movement or sound, the drawing asks the viewer to slow down, to look closely, to consider what lies beneath the visible.
The drawing reclaims the sea as a place of depth, unease, and spirit — a space that cannot be fully known or controlled, only encountered through the eyes, the heart, and the soul..