Her Ocean Floor is a series of cast paper sculptures. The title draws on the pioneering work of Marie Tharp, the oceanographer who first charted the ocean floor.
This is an ongoing series (2025—).
Pieces began to float up to the surface. We didn’t recognize them at first, though something in our bodies told us we knew these shapes. It had been so long since we felt anything like that kind of touch.
topology i, 2025. 21"x14"x3"
topology ii, 2025. 12"x20"x2"
topology iii, 2025. 14"x16"x2"
at Studio 41, Long Island City
Grid lines were drawn, right angles imposed to understand origins. We used our best science to determine subject object relations. How, otherwise, could we authenticate our differentiation? Biology, we thought, offered us ancestor sediment. We drilled down through stromatolite, through diatomite, through serpentinite, through whale fall, tracing the lines of our taxonomies down to the cellular level. But there are no fixed boundaries surrounding the simple cell.
So we redrew the lines.
topographies-morphologies i, 2025, 20”x 17”x3”
Was that a hand or the place where a hand was held? Were they the bodies of the dead? Yes. And–also the shapes we might become, that we became, and undid.
The grid failed to demarcate a single thing. The only properties preserved under continuous mappings was a desiring that won’t be captured by desire.
pigmented cast cotton and linen paper sculpture
inquiries: studio.kristadragomer@gmail.com