PetrifiCāre (2024), Hedwich Rooks
EXHIBITION: Door Open Space
Thu May 30 – Sun June 2
Coal is formed from innumerable dead plant bodies and comes into existence underground over a period of millions of years. From the 18th century, coal was extracted and used as a fossil fuel in new industries in Europe. Today, coal is still the major driver of today's industrial, chemical and digital world. Simultaneously, the burning of coal has created a planetary emergency, endangering all bodies on Earth.
Still, artist Hedwich Rooks is fascinated by the supernatural and embodied power of coal, and how our contemporary lives are intertwined with it. During a residency at in Zeche Zollverein, one of the world's largest (now decommissioned) historic coal mines, she explored the ecological, chemical, and social dimensions of coal. Rooks conducted a series of meticulous documented chemical and scanning tests to understand coal’s agency and composition.
By scanning the internal pore structure of coal with healthcare imaging technology (such as MRI and micro CT scan) Rooks became sensitive to the bodies of the past, present and future affected by its human use, and with which modern technology is created. This aluminium-intensive machinery was constructed with the energy of the same material they were now scanning.
This led her to the work PetrifiCāre – which is Latin for ’to harden organic matter by depositing dissolved minerals’. Adding the capital letter C to Ccāre invites us to consider ‘care’ for coal and fellow earth materials, arising from an interconnectedness between life forms over different time scales. The work can be read as an arrangement of relationships to the spirit to past carbon existence, which made the transformation and healing of other materials and bodies possible.
About the artist
A contemporary alchemist, Hedwich Rooks’s artistic practice is primarily research-based, ranging from lens-based media to sculptural installations, drawing on biogeochemical phenomena and their processes. Conceptually, she explores what the collision of matter can teach us about alternative and constantly transforming societies.
