[continuous resilience]
CONTINUOUS RESILIENCE
2020
Burnt Tree, Fire, Rope
Ponte de Mucela, Portugal
Forests remember differently from people.
Their memories are preserved within scars, within bark, within the silent evidence left upon the landscape. Long after catastrophe has passed, traces remain embedded within the terrain.
Continuous Resilience emerged during a residency in the mountainous region of Ponte de Mucela, Portugal.
Several years earlier, the region had been devastated by one of the deadliest wildfires in modern Portuguese history. Entire forests disappeared. Villages were destroyed. Lives were lost. Yet amongst the remains, new growth had already begun to emerge.
Life persisted.
Not despite destruction, but through it.
Whilst walking through the surrounding mountains, Tae encountered a fallen tree lying across a rural path. Its surface was blackened by fire. Its body appeared corpse like against the landscape. Yet beneath the burnt exterior, another condition revealed itself. As sections of bark detached, intricate pathways created by woodworms emerged beneath the surface.
The markings resembled an unknown script.
A language written by life within death.
The tree was transported to the residency and stripped of its remaining outer layer, exposing the full extent of these delicate networks. One half of the trunk was reduced to a pale, bone like surface. The other was deliberately burnt, allowing the charred exterior to reappear whilst preserving the white pathways beneath.
The resulting division established a fragile equilibrium.
Black and white.
Life and death.
Growth and disappearance.
Neither side dominates the other.
Instead, both remain suspended in perpetual tension.
The tree was elevated horizontally and balanced upon a single rope. What appeared stable remained vulnerable. What appeared dead remained inhabited by life.
The work became inseparable from the landscape from which it emerged.
The woodworms continued their labour long after the fire had passed. New forests continued to emerge from scorched ground. Communities continued to rebuild after devastation.
Resilience revealed itself not as heroism, but as persistence.
A slow return.
A continual movement towards life.
Continuous Resilience stands as a memorial not to destruction itself, but to the forces that continue after destruction has ended.
Even within darkness, something remains at work.
Even within absence, something continues.
“continuous resilience”
This work portrays the balance of life that is seemingly visible in the remains of a dead tree. Black(life) white(death). Wood worms carving paths throughout the burnt tree, sheds light upon the fact that even at pitch darkness there is lingerings of life trying to illuminate what has been lost. Remembering the devastating wildfire of October 2017 in Portugal.
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