Sabrina Dunne
she/her
Sea Inside
Inspired by the marker buoy as an object that stays afloat despite challenging conditions, 'Sea Inside' is a work that explores ways of reconstructing buoys that have broken and can no longer function as they once did. The buoy is a metaphor for those who deal with chronic illness and find themselves struggling to stay afloat.
Each buoy is carefully reconstructed using wax fused to plaster, with the visible breaks and repairs of each piece intentionally illuminated. The interplay between the soft light of the translucent wax and the opaqueness of the hard plaster helps to create a juxtaposition of fragility and resilience. The use of the light to highlight these repairs takes inspiration from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which deliberately repairs broken objects using gold. The gold enhances the flaw, challenging us to embrace the imperfection as part of the object's history, rather than concealing it.