by Maeve Fagan

There’s a space in-between.

A world that thrives in the tumbled shadows of caves, and in mysterious unknowns that lie in reflective watery surfaces. There’s a fault line that cracks across the mind when bringing the unknown or numinous into existence. There is a breathing of life into the corners of our imagination; and a sense of destruction can happen at the very moment of creation. Perhaps it’s the relinquishing of borders that blur what is objectively known from what is felt; there’s a magic in the way we bleed ourselves into the earth. To peer into a void and to fill the space is alchemy – to be able to will the unknown into existence.

I push my mind and imagination, imprinting a little bit of myself into these inanimate objects, breathe life into those cracks, hoping something will reveal itself more than my emotions reflected back. Can I feel the world breathing around me – contracting it’s muscles – forming and shaping life? Like a deep womb.

I thank her for the blood that pulses through roots that branch into the veins that we share. For I am with the rocks and roots and the blood is mine.

She unveils more of myself than I thought. Seeding life and existence into the ebb and flow, it’s the magic that makes everything seem alive – be conscious, to be in attendance with the orchestra that is apart of it all – the world you create for oneself.

Efflorescence is a body of work consisting of photographs and a site-specific installation, which explore the ideas of nature and the sacred. The space mainly consists of organic materials such as branches, bark and leaves – the labyrinth that merges with rock and stone align and act as guides and guards of the home from which they were born. Meandering wild flower and fynbos juxtapose the soft and hard as well as the beautifully ferocious endurance that encompasses the essence of nature – the cycle between life and death.