Obscured Record

Obscured recordsp; Invisible landscapes, unacknowledged testimonies

This project explores the fragile traces of marine life,
time, and memory, translating what has been erased, overlooked,
or forgotten. In this DDW, transforms scientific and archaeological methods into sensory forms, using rocks, fish bones, and fish skins collected from the North Sea and Zandmotor near The Hague, revealing the narratives embedded in these materials, the silent record of the sea.

Color Record 01: Fermented Time of North Sea

The Zandmotor near The Hague is an artificial shoreline made by pumping sand from the North Sea seabed. In the process, buried rocks, iron oxides, and industrial slag surfaced, carrying time from the Ice Age Dogger Bank to today. I collected and studied these materials and turned them into clay bodies and rock glazes, so fragments of seafloor move onto a vessel’s skin and into its hollow, giving form to once-invisible time. The work adopts the Korean Moon Jar, a vessel for storage and fermentation whose round body recalls the moon and cycles; in some places jars were buried to foster natural fermentation, where nature’s time meets human culture. In “Color Record: Fermented Time of the North Sea,” the Moon Jar becomes a surface that holds the stones’ colors and a void that contains time like fermentation. Twelve jars glazed with iron oxides from North Sea strata layer the lunar cycle, human practices, and geologic deep time, making vast duration legible through surface color and interior emptiness.

Color Record 02 : Blue Bone

“Color Record: Blue Bone” began with an accident during bone-china research: when fish bones were fired at high temperature, they turned blue. The shift likely stems from heavy metals accumulated in the bones (copper, iron, manganese). Ongoing tests across regions, species, and body sizes show subtle differences in tone and intensity. The main drivers appear to be marine pollution, habitat conditions, and metal-rich components in aquaculture feed—each tied to human industry and impact, i.e., the Anthropocene. This change is hard to see until specific thermal treatment makes it visible. The artist transfers the fired-bone blues into clay bodies and glazes, and uses fish bone to crystallize glaze, translating material properties into a visual language. The exhibition presents experiments, outcomes, and derived objects to symbolically reveal ocean states we struggle to perceive and the marks of the Anthropocene.