Wither and Sprout
2024
Stainless Steel, UV Print Perspex, Glass, Chainmail
80 x 65 x 65 cm
Natalie Sasi Organ’s new works expand on her exploration of a realm shaped by the relic of a fading world: the betel nut. Through sculpture and paintings, she conjures supernatural ecologies, with evolving landscapes shaped by this sacred nut, which stains all of existence. Dense with symbolism tied to fertility and womanhood and used in childbearing practices, the betel nut weaves into an intricate narrative in Sasi Organ’s work. The narrative is underpinned by a feminine lens that resonates throughout her practice. The roots and sprouting plant of the betel nut harken back to ancestral and intergenerational realms, its potency enhancing the chasm between worlds, reverberating echoes from one realm to the next. Yet, these roots are withering, struggling to find new fissures in an ever-expanding world of modernisation and preserved colonial artifice, as they attempt to reclaim ground and keep alive threatened customs that risk dying unrecorded.
Wither and Sprout continues this narrative through an installation built on the foundations of the betel plant — reimagining a portal blooming from its roots. This portal invites viewers into an abyss of ambiguity, evoking a surreal state of introspection informed by texts that embody the intergenerational chewing of betel nut from one mouth to another. Within the sculpture, chainmail is interwoven, meshing these histories and symbolic references. Often seen as a relic of a bygone era, chainmail serves as a reminder of the tension between preservation and erosion, linking the disregarded past with the ever-changing present. These links are fragile, at risk of breaking apart if not actively remembered. In a natural alignment with fostering kinship between mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and women, the betel plant reveals the otherworldly fractures between generations while simultaneously reminding us of the importance of passing down knowledge that might otherwise be lost in translation.