SALT LAKE EXCERPT, UAE (2023)

Collaboration with Joanna Settle, theater director
PET, fabric, screens, water, tanks, light, sound, wave makers
38′ x 20′ x 5′

De St. Croix is known for room-enveloping installations, and here he collaborates with theater artist and NYUAD faculty Joanna Settle. This project began with their visit to a series of salt lakes and salt flats (more often referred to by their Arabic name, sabkha) found in the UAE. This work contains elements of both.

The vista of this art installation takes on an eerie life of its own, perhaps evoking an Arctic landscape as much as a salt lake or salt flat, accompanied by moving theatrical lighting with sound composition. Here, the crystals are flakes of plastic, PET from 50,000 plastic bottles in their recycling process. De St. Croix has long used PET in his sculptures, inviting viewers to experience a shift in perception from “nature” (ice or salt crystals) to “human-made” (plastic).

As De St. Croix points out, the planet’s oceans are getting hotter and saltier than ever before, and as water salinity increases, so do surface temperatures of the planet. Likewise, Settle notes, plastic permeates so many of our natural environments that one might say it is part of nature now. In this human-made landscape, the artists have created a kind of parallel universe in which plastic stands in for the elements, and the recesses of the earth speak back to us.

Commissioned by The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery

Sound Design, Sound System Design: João Menezes. Lighting Design: Simon Fraulo. Construction Design: Michael “Mick” Uveges. Kawader Research Fellow: Fatema Al Fardan. Voices: Fatema Al Fardan, Joanna Settle, Logan Settle Rishard, Maryam Alshehhi, Tala Gharagozlou.

Special thanks to DGrade, Co.