Lighthouse Works presents the “Champagne & Oysters” opening celebration for this year’s public art commission by Rachelle Dang on Sunday, May 28 from 5-7 pm at Ferry Park on Silver Eel Cove.
Join us for champagne and oysters to celebrate Rachelle Dang’s Chorus, our 10th Public Art Commission at Silver Eel Cove, Fishers Island, NY.
Chorus, a site-specific sculpture by artist Rachelle Dang, takes inspiration from the rhizomatic root structure of beachgrass (Ammophila breviligulata) found on Fishers Island and the interconnected netting of roots that stabilizes the dune.
Known for her intricately layered installations that fuse in-depth research of colonial exploitation and propagation of botanicals with deftly made objects and images, Dang was inspired by the Island’s ecology to imagine a collective world above and beneath the dune as the complex performance of an ecosystem with myriad species and actors.
In her statement, Dang writes: “These thoughts led me to the idea of singers and actors under a tapestry of roots. My project for Lighthouse Works comprises a rhizomatic curtain, a proscenium resembling the silhouette of a dune or cloud, and a stage for interspecies symbiosis. The sculpture connects sky, land, and ocean with a fluidity that emerged from my large-scale ink drawings, which I created with a 3ft brush on a roll of rosin paper directly on the floor. The height of the sculpture is true to life: beach grass roots can extend several meters below the surface of the dune.”
Chorus will be on view from May to December 2023 at the Ferry Park on Silver Eel Cove.
