Earsthetic: Mikhail Karikis – Sea Women ** 25 Nov – 1 Dec 2015 ** Brighton Dome
Sea Women is a video and sound installation by Mikhail Karikis focusing on a fast vanishing community of elderly female sea workers living on the North Pacific island of Jeju – a jagged patch of black volcanic rock that belongs to South Korea and floats between Japan and China. The work was created during Karikis’s residency on the island, when he enountered a group of women called haenyeo (sea-women), now in their late 70s and 80s, who dive to great depths with no oxygen supply to find pearls and catch sea-food. This ancient female profession became the dominant economic force on the island by the 1970s, establishing a matriarchal system.
Karikis’s project Sea Women witnesses the diving women’s insistence on sustainable eco-feminist work practices operating outside the trend of industrialization. It observes the reversal of traditional gender-roles, the women’s deep sense of community and egalitarianism, their collective economics, and their sense of professional identity, purpose, fun and independence in later age.
Brighton Dome
Wed 25 Nov – Tue 1 Dec
Please check back closer to the event for full opening times
Source: Sea Women / What’s On / Brighton Dome
Sussex ArtBeat 