STORYTELLERS EXHIBITION

October 5-28 2023

TSUNAMI, KOH PHI PHI THAILAND 2004

mixed media, 8”x8”x9”, 2016

I am a SCUBA diving instructor. In 2004 I traveled to Thailand and arrived on the island of Koh Phi Phi, 4 months after the tsunami that devastated South East Asia. On the ferry there, a Belgian journalist, coming back for a follow up, remarked that the place did not smell of death anymore. When the wave hit, it destroyed 60 percent of the buildings on the island and claimed nearly 1300 lives. You could see the desolation everywhere, only locals and volunteers inhabited the island and had just the most basic of amenities.

For the following 4 months to the rate of 3 dives a day and 6 days a week, I became part of the volunteer clean up diving crew. We collected…