THE MARITIME TALE OF THE HERMIT CRAB
at MAAT Museum, Lisbon, portugal
On View: 9 April 2025 → 08 September 2025
Review in Contemporânea
Hand-dyed textile, handwoven linen fabric, weaving, crochet, fabric manipulation, steel, paper, resin, stone
Performers: Mirjam Külm (a compositora), Ellen Hörnberg, Hannah Smithies, Ricardo Gil Machado Pereira, Daria Morozova, Roberta Ba
Acknowledgements
Culture Moves Europe, The Loft Atelier, Clara Vicente, Wnoozow, Mirjam Külm, Daria Morozova, Gonçalo Barreiros, 3+1 Arte Contemporânea
‘The Maritime tale of the Hermit Crab’ references the life of hermit crab as a metaphor to address issues of dislocation, homelessness, vulnerability and loneliness in contemporary society. The hermit crab is the only crab that is born without a shell, instead it used found objects, most commonly sea shells as its home. However, with recent pollution issues, bottle tops, fragments of cans and other plastic waste have increasingly become used by the crabs as their shells. As the crab grows it needs to upgrade shells. This is usually done in cooperation with other crabs once a new empty shell is discovered on the beach through making an orderly queue to swap hand-me-down shells from the biggest crab to the smallest. This utopian collaboration is not always successful, however, as there may be more competition for one or more shells, leaving some crabs shell-less and in perilous danger of dying, for they cannot survive long without a shell.
This installation commissioned by MAAT Museum roots in the notion of “the body as a home” in psychological terms. With the ever-growing use of technology, online connectedness, heightened travel, precarious living and financial conditions for many of us, we have become increasingly disconnected from ourselves. Seeking one’s own ‘body as a home’ is the first step toward regaining a connection with ourselves and reaching out to form communities. The issues of rising homelessness and the housing crisis in Lisbon, the city where the artist lives and works in, are highlighted in this work, whilst simultaneaously it is also a story of hope and finding a home in a new country, about adaptation and assimilation, about merging one’s own culture with the culture of an adopted country.
‘The Maritime Tale of the Hermit Crab’ is an installation in 2 parts. A large textile structure in the form of a pillar with costumes mimicking shells that the audience can enter and inhabit as well as a stage for a 5 person choir that sings a ballad of the hermit crab specially composed by Mirjam Külm in Estonian, Welsh and Portuguese languages. Further, there are 3 crabs without their shells (made from basic buling materials used in construction) homeless so-to-say, displayed in the machine rooms of the MAAT Museum attempting to the use the space as their homes, squeezing their delicate fabric bodies in-between the machines. Perhaps a little bit ashamed of their nudity and homelessness, hiding from sight, but also grateful to have found refuge.
Image credits Bruno Lopes and Joana Linda