MERGULLO
Sculpture, video performance
2023/2024

MERGULLO is a site-specific video performance and sculpture, developed on the Galician Costa da Morte, where the artist has lived and worked for several years. Wrapped in fabric, Franke moves slowly into a secluded bay and subjects her body to a gradual submersion. This gesture is an attempt to inscribe herself into the dynamics of the sea without controlling them. “Sculptures in motion” emerge – generated by the interplay of fabric, water, sunlight and the body, as material residues of the performative act. The project explores issues of physicality and integration within natural processes. Its link to Galician culture is evident in its intimate connection with the landscape of the Costa da Morte – a region historically defined by the relationship between humans and the sea. The sea is portrayed as an ambivalent and formative force that both sustains life and harbours danger and loss. The repeated act of submerging oneself becomes a form of embodied knowledge: a practice that stands in opposition to a detached and purely visual appropriation of nature, favouring instead physical experience and mutual intertwining.