And a third of the waters became wormwood

About

The work presented in the exhibition is driven by the artist’s research into the Mediterranean Sea Basin’s past, present and future: In the 1970s, a deep-sea drilling expedition proved that, over five million years ago, the Mediterranean sea was once dry, connecting the African and European continents by land. Today, the sea continues to act as a major crossroads but also an obstacle between the different mediterranean cultures which surround it. In the 1920s through 1950s, an alternative but unrealized future for the Mediterranean sea and surrounding area was proposed by Herman Sörgel, according to which, several dams would be installed in order to generate hydroelectric power and would lower the Mediterranean’s sea level, exposing new land for settlement and connecting Europe and Africa in a utopian vision of peace and unity between Europe and Africa. The project was not supported by the Nazi party for these reasons and was never completed.

In this body of work, Littwitz addresses human migration and nationalism in the Mediterranean space, investigating the dual nature of this geographic feature to the extent that it connects and separates, acting as both a junction as well as a barrier between the Global North and South.