Sumerge the body

Atarazanas Gallery, Valencia, Spain.  2022

In 1951, at the age of nine months, my mother lost the hearing in her right ear after an infection in the eardrum, a problem that was not solved until fifteen years later with the first transplant performed in Chile. In spite of the operation my mother was never able to be under water and in my memories she is always found on the seashore, never submerging her body; what would it be like to have never heard under water; to have never experienced the sound variations of the waves, the stones, the bubbles?

Submerge the body is an action-installation that consists of ten sound devices composed of a siliconized right ear and a mono-channel direct audio system that reproduce in real time the underwater soundscape captured underwater. The sound is heard upon contact with the mass of ears drifting in the sea, establishing a link between the prosthesis, the water and the listener's ear, as if submerging the body.