Jonat Deelstra (NL, 1991) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with painting, printmaking, installations, and ceramics. His practice moves between the narrative and the estranging. In the project Funeral Center the North Sea, he explores how ceramic sculptures can contribute to nature restoration on the seabed.
Deelstra aims to place ceramic “reef urns” and “death shells,” containing a human body or ashes, on the seabed. These sailors’ graves made of clay form a base on which coral and other organisms can attach. In this way, the sculptures become an ideal breeding ground for marine life; oysters, mussels, and anemones can cling to the solid forms. Thus a sacred reef emerges, transforming death into new life while simultaneously contributing to the protection of the ecosystem.
Through this project, Deelstra investigates how an underwater cemetery could provide ethical and legal protection to an area that is under heavy pressure from commercial interests such as oil and gas drilling and bottom trawling. For the first prototypes, he focuses on the Dogger Bank, also known as the nursery of the North Sea.
