aude bourgine honor creates embroidered and beaded coral sculptures

french visual artist aude bourgine honor’s references the fragility of our oceans, using textiles, beads, and sequins, to create coral sculptures. the artist creates displays that capture the beauty and fragility of coral for a series called ‘poumons des océans,’ which translates to ‘lungs of the oceans.’

images courtesy of the artist

honor’s work is born from the sense of guilt she feels in humanity for all it has done to the natural world. encased in glass bell jars, her work elevates these living things whilst symbolically protecting them from the outside world. ‘if we do not rapidly change our relationship with our environment, oceans will be dead by 2050,’ the artist said in a statement on her website. ‘their disappearance will entail a disastrous imbalance on all ecological, climate and human levels…We must take heed for this universal cause, which concerns each and every one of us.‘

honor has been slowly developing this series over the course of four years. she dubs them dummy corals, crafting them using various textiles and materials she has recovered and repurposed. the artist has an upcoming solo exhibition at the saint julien chapel in le petit-quevilly in northern france from june 7 through 30, 2019.

‘at the origin of my practice was to find how to live with, learn to listen to this pain rather than bury it to finally know the appeasement’, the artist explains. ‘this gave birth to a first series of works entitled ‘lungs of the oceans’ intended to awaken the feeling of wonder for the nature that surrounds us and the desire to protect it’.