Mutually Assured: Collaboration with Fiber Artist, Maggie Sasso
Mutually Assured was born of the stacked personal and societal anxieties of the past three years. Maggie and Adam, two like-minded artists and educators, started from a conversation about hidden threats and the fear of something dangerous but unseen. The underwater mine, or “Naval Mine”, serving as a graphic and visceral stand-in for so many of the lurking and festering threats we endured and continue to endure of late. On the larger societal scale, Covid-19, with its viral form so reminiscent of the mine itself, first as a complete unknown; then a constant overpowering, little-understood nightmare; then as a general confused anxiety about how to exist in the world with this thing ever-present. On the personal scale, physical and mental health issues that fester yet never fully reveal themselves; lingering pain that alters how we live while evading us. The mine sits just beneath the surface of the water. It is invisible as we navigate the waves, on calm days or inclement weather. It is harmless until it isn’t. It can bob and shift with the tide and become a habitat for those smaller lifeforms that see it in their daily travels, but when triggered, it changes everything. A delayed violence.
Maggie and Adam have created an object that warns the viewer of itself. Of the dangers beneath the surface. The ghostly mine floats calmly, and the flags warn those passing by of the imminent threat.