samara scott elevates floating, iridescent waste with 'the doldrums'

with her latest work ‘the doldrums,’ english artist samara scott takes over the great nave of the CAPC museum of contemporary art of bordeaux, france. the installation comprises an enormous, artificial ceiling topped with scattered beached debris. visitors are invited to walk around and beneath it, to experience the dual identity of this large-scale alchemical collage, both digital and material, attractive and repulsive. the artist’s work is fuelled by the context of hyper-consumerism, resulting in poisonously colored installations generated by ‘hijacking’ manufactured objects and by-products of mass production.

samara scott, ‘the doldrums,’ CAPC bordeaux | image © guy boyer

with ‘the doldrums,’ samara scott suspends a veil which horizontally divides the central space of the CAPC museum of contemporary art of bordeaux. this results in a fluid 10,000 square-foot canopy over the wide nave at the level of the mezzanine. on this plane the artist introduces a vast ‘pictorial,’ multimedia composition with the use of plastics, textiles, fluids, and scrap, as well as such substances as coffee, cotton and spices, which recall the historical use of the CAPC building as a warehouse for colonial goods in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

samara scott, ‘the doldrums,’ CAPC bordeaux | image by frédéric deval

‘the doldrums’ by samara scott can be experienced both from above and from below, offering visitors two very different perspectives on the same work. from below, the work appears to be as a smooth, flush image — an iridescent sky, which seems to float, shiver, and ripple as the visitor walk beneath it. from the mezzanines, ‘the doldrums’ recasts itself and unveils the waste objects that make up this blasted landscape of the twenty-first century, fully embracing its ‘toxic positivity.’ nothing here seems to separate material culture from the digital world, nor the sublime from the sordid.

samara scott, ‘the doldrums,’ CAPC bordeaux | image by frédéric deval