JULIA ZURILLA

Tide of Memory (The Vortex) 2024–2025

Tide of Memory (The Vortex) is a multimedia project composed of two interconnected environments that explore memory as a fragile and unstable fissure suspended between personal history and environmental transformation. The main installation presents a monumental projection of turbulent ocean imagery flowing across suspended transparent plastic—material commonly associated with temporary protection against storms, floods, and environmental catastrophe. The translucent plastic transforms the moving image into a shifting sculptural presence, allowing the projection to appear both immersive and precarious, as if suspended within space itself.

In the lower corner of the projection, a circular opening functions as a vortex or portal through which fragments of digitized 8 mm home movies emerge and disappear. These archival images, filmed during the golden age of tourism in South Florida, reveal scenes of leisure, family intimacy, and idyllic coastal life that now appear unstable within increasingly vulnerable environmental conditions. The circular framing evokes binocular vision, memory devices, black holes, and unstable passages between past and present.

The project also includes Untitled (Breathing Room), a more intimate spatial intervention composed of mirrors, transparent plastic, light, and subtle movement. Installed as a suspended atmospheric environment, the piece expands the project’s reflection on fragility, perception, and the psychological sensation of inhabiting unstable spaces shaped by climate anxiety and emotional memory.

Together, both installations transform the exhibition space into an immersive landscape where ocean, reflection, transparency, sound, and archival imagery converge. Tide of Memory (The Vortex) proposes memory not as something fixed, but as a drifting and vulnerable current continuously surfacing and dissolving within the unstable tides of the present.