Elena Alonso Fernández
Portrait of a Kelp Forest
Portrait of a Kelp Forest, 2021-22
A collaborative project with marine biologists, coastal communities
and a kelp.
Elena Alonso Fernández
Portrait of a Kelp Forest is a participatory, artistic research project that was
carried out in Galicia (north-west Spain). With this project, the artist Elena
Alonso Fernández portrays an essential element of this coast: kelp forests,
one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Following her idea of
a portrait based on participation, Alonso Fernández worked with the people
who know these algae best: the marine biologists engaged with their
conservation and the coastal communities who have been in direct contact
with them for decades. Alonso Fernández immersed herself in this
ecosystem, dived with biologists and algae collectors, sailed with
fishermen and interviewed several marine experts, documenting all these
experiences and personal narratives with video. This research indirectly
flowed into her paintings, testimonies of the algae that now come to the
surface in vibrant colors and become protagonists. But more than objects
of observation, the kelp plays an active role in its own portrait. With the
help of an underwater sensor, Alonso Fernández recorded the movements
of the seaweed for two months. Using her paintings as a starting point, she
employed creative coding to generate animations determined directly by
the movements of the kelp, which can now be viewed in augmented reality
(AR) on any mobile device. The seaweed has become, through this
process, co–author of the project.
