Crochet Coral Reef: Toxic Seas at MAD New York

The Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York features three large-scale crochet coral installations by Margaret and Christine Wertheim. The project, now a decade old, uses hyperbolic crochet to model coral reefs and critique climate change and ocean pollution. Coral Forest replicates living corals with beads, Bleached Reef shows bleached corals, and Toxic Reef Serve depicts slow death. A suspended fishing net, The Midden, contains four years of the artists' plastic waste, mimicking the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The work intersects art, activism, and science, rooted in the hyperbolic geometry discovered by mathematician Daina Taimina in 1997. The Wertheims, originally from Australia, began crocheting after learning of Great Barrier Reef damage. Their politically charged practice is linked to CalArts, which revitalized craft and women's arts in the 1970s. The exhibition includes a chalk timeline on a blackboard dating coral formation, Earth's history, and the founding of Margaret Wertheim's Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles. The project has traveled globally but never to France; its first commission was from the Warhol Museum in 2007, followed by a 370-square-meter installation in Chicago.