ARC
Lead Artist: Sarah Kavage
Collaborating Artist: Aymar Ccopacatty
Project: Water Spirit
About
ARC is a sculptural boat built using Aymara reed boat building techniques—the Aymara people, located in Peru and Bolivia around Lake Titicaca, build boats, houses, and entire floating islands out of Totora reed! To create ARC, L~W lead artist Sarah Kavage collaborated with Aymar Ccopacatty, an Aymara sculptor now based in Rhode Island who holds the cultural knowledge of building reed boats as well as other traditional textile methods. Ccopacatty is known for working these ancient techniques with non-traditional modern materials such as recycled plastic bags that he collects mostly from his homeland of Peru.
The creation of this boat brings together a variety of materials across space and time — contemporary and traditional, near and far. Because the locally-harvested and invasive Phragmites reed used by Ccopacatty and Kavage does not float like the Totora reed, they used hundreds of colorful recycled plastic bottles in the center of the structure. By combining recycled plastic along with a reed that is classified as invasive in this area, the artists prompt discussions about the movement of plants and people, climate change, environmental degradation, climate migration, colonization, and solidarity between peoples across the Americas.
As a collateral activity, Artist Miguel Horn is leading youth from immigrant rights organization Juntos in creating their own artwork that responds to the boat and these themes.
ARC’s Ccopacatty and Kavage were in residence at the Seaport Museum’s Maker Space In September and October 2021. Once constructed, the boat remains on display in the boat basin outside the Seaport Museum in the Delaware River through the fall season.
ARC has its first float on October 12, 2021. Visit our Events Page for information.
The Lenapehoking~Watershed art initiative is grateful to the Robert Johnson Foundation for its support of ARC!
