Deathwork (Roots and Aquifer) by Marina Zurkow

Deathwork (Roots and Aquifer)2024

Digital print on Kozo Thick 110 gsm paper90 x 36 in / 228.6 x 91.4 cmEdition of 3, 1 AP

Marina Zurkow’s Deathwork series was originally motivated by the threat of AI inciting the fabled “death of the author.” In an investigation of this notion, the artist began composing unlikely formations that merged visual histories, morbidity, and landscape elements through sustained improvisations in collaboration with AI. Dall-e’s rich database of East Asian imagery mingled with Zurkow’s own experiences and influences as skies and horizons assembled into topographic scrolls. Works within this series originate through unimaginable associations of errors and victories. All three of the works feature lively substrate—in these works, soil—which, in many ways is unseeable and unknowable without technologies or imaginations. These "soil profiles” (portraits) are full of magic and also pollution, debris, and mutations. Deathwork (Roots and Aquifer) was visually inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s works on paper. The work speculates on the underground life beneath entangled root systems, a mythic aquifer where garbage, turtles, reeds, and fish play far beneath the possible.

Deathwork (Roots and Aquifer) by Marina Zurkow, 2024