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CONTACT: Judith Bell 18 January 2000
"Ghost Nets establishes a bond between environmentalism and visual art that is all too rare. . . . Rahmani's project is a model for ways of seeing nature and the world around us." -Lucy Lippard The remarkable story of Ghost Nets, one woman's transformation of a town dump into a series of ecologically thriving wetlands, will be fully realized by artist Aviva Rahmani with a ritual walk 20 March (the Vernal Equinox) with members of the local community at the site in Vinalhaven, Maine. "What the earth really needs is a good housekeeper," says Rahmani. "This was not only a 10-year performance about how individuals can effect global environmental change, but a statement about the resonance of all human interaction. Ghost Nets' success is contrary to the very nature of conventional artwork, because the project was most effective when I was invisible." Ghost Nets takes its name from monofilament gill nets used by fishermen. When lost overboard, these invisible indestructible nets drift through the ocean, trapping fish indiscriminately and strip-mining the sea. Rahmani claims these nets as a metaphor for how familiar, destructive patterns can trap and kill us all. Rahmani's journey as artist-cum-ecological rehabilitator has yielded not only a renovated salt marsh but a large body of documentary artwork, which includes paintings, photographs, videos, performance-art pieces, and formatted journals. In January 1991 Rahmani began work to restore 2.5 acres in fishing village on an island in the Gulf of Maine, thereby linking 70 acres of a class-A migratory-bird fly zone. Many rich layers of meaning lie within the Ghost Nets project. Rahmani embraces the concept that any relationship is a work of art, thus opening up dialogues that include the role of housewife/steward/caretaker, the outsider within the context of a local community; and the earth as an analogy for the female body. As she lived on and rehabilitated the site, Rahmani explored and extrapolated the traditional role of the housewife in daily Ghost Nets journal entries, in which she recorded what she had done to the site as well as her own literal and emotional housekeeping chores. Rahmani's gradual acceptance by the insular local fishing culture is a fascinating commentary on human interactions. Since moving to the village in 1990, she has immersed herself in the community, cultivating relationships with neighbors, going out on fishing boats, taking oral histories, and conducting extended interviews. Rahmani recently started singing with the local church choir, finding her voice a powerful and delightful new tool to reach others. Ghost Nets also presents the rehabilitation of the land as a survival story, a symbol of empowerment for women whose bodies have been abused, and of this restoration as a celebration of regeneration and fecundity. Since her early-1970s feminist performance-art work in California, Rahmani's career has largely focused on issues of abuse, sexuality, and human relationships. This is a natural culmination of that path. Rahmani now enters into the more-public educational phase of the Ghost Nets project. She has recently presented to the Harvard Graduate School of Design; collaborated with research staff at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in Wells, Maine; participated in the June 1999 1st International Art & Ecology Workshop/Conference conducted in the Nes Harim Forest and Jerusalem, Israel; and collaborated on educational projects, including work with William Hubbard, Chief of the Environmental Resources Branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She is currently developing an environmental art program at the College of the Atlantic, an innovative institution that trains students as environmental activists. More information about Rahmani and her work with Ghost Nets can be found at www.ghostnets.com. |