Mel Chin: SEA to SEE
October 5, 2022 - January 29, 2023
Coe Gallery
SEA to SEE is a unique installation by North Carolina-based artist and 2019 MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin, commissioned to accompany The Mint Museum’s exhibition Connecting the World: The Panama Canal at 100. In lieu of making an additional artwork regarding the man-made canal, the artist created a work that focuses on the oceans it connects. Instead of expressing the sea in symbolic form, Chin created two unique cinematic portraits, one of the Atlantic and one of the Pacific Oceans, utilizing animated visualization of oceanographic data.
Museum visitors stand before two massive hemispherical glass projection screens facing each other in the installation. Its form recalls images of the globe crisscrossed by latitude and longitude lines as well as the gridded structure of the Canal’s massive lock gates.
Chin has stated that “while people may not immediately recognize the films as being of the Atlantic or the Pacific,” he hopes that the experience of “walking between these huge orbs, suggesting the weight of some state of water” will lead to “a desire to really connect with factual information about the ecology of the oceans. Those connections can bring about dramatic and important discussions in our time about our future in times of climate change and the importance of the oceans that are fundamental to our survival.”
Exhibition support provided by: InsideOut Performance Fabrics; Summer Classics; Arhaus; Allsteel; Corning Incorporated Foundation; TSH Charitable Foundation; Abernethy Laurels; Rock Barn Country Club & Spa; United Arts Council of Catawba County with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts; City of Hickory Community Relations Council; and Linda & John Greenwell; and annual sponsors Shurtape Technologies and Alex Lee.