Crochet Coral Reef: Toxic Seas

Part political statement, part amazingly intricate and beautiful crochet sculptures, Crochet Coral Reef is something to be seen to be believed at the NYC Museum of Design.

To me it is a bit of yarn bombing and total whimsy with a political punch.

 

The exhibit celebrates the tenth anniversary of the “Crochet Coral Reef” (2005–present), an ongoing project by sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim and their Los Angeles–based organization, the Institute For Figuring.

Mixing crocheted yarn with plastic trash, the work fuses mathematics, marine biology, feminist art practices, and craft to produce large-scale coralline landscapes, both beautiful and blighted. At once figurative, collaborative, worldly, and dispersed, the “Crochet Coral Reef” offers a tender response to the dual calamities facing marine life: climate change and plastic trash.