Since the dawn of life nature has utilized algorithmic techniques to generate mathematical forms such as the hyperbolic surfaces of corals. Craft practices too are algorithmic – the original “digital” technologies – and through the medium of yarn intricate emulations of living reefs can be brought into being.

The Crochet Coral Reef project by Australian-born twin-sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim is a meditation on the interplay between nature, mathematics and iterative construction, and also a response to the decimation of actual reefs by global warming.

A unique nexus of art, science, geometry and environmental reflection, the Crochet Coral Reef is an ever-evolving archipelago of woolen installations that not only emulates the structures of natural reefs but also enacts the evolutionary processes by which living things evolve. Just as life on earth is underpinned by the code of DNA, so these fiber forms are material incarnations of a symbolic code – the stitch patterns of crochet. And like the living reefs they refer to, the Wertheims’ reefs send out spawn.

In a communal dimension of the project, the sisters work with communities around the world to create vastly-scaled Satellite Reefs. More than 40 of these have been fabricated, from London to Latvia, with 10,000 people so far contributing to this on-going eco-art happening.

Figurative, collaborative, worldly, and dispersed, the Crochet Coral Reef project offers a response climate change at once formal and material, monumental and tender.

Christine and Margaret Wertheim are invited artists to the Biennale Arte 2019, curated by Ralph Rugoff.

Biennale - Press Release
Biennale - List of Participating Artists

“The sculptures are like force-fields drawing you into their orbit, catalysts for a network of social relations that mimic a reef’s … Gorgeous, absurd and socially productive, these are rare works of art.” —Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times