Desh.

I was always interested in challenging boundaries.  It began with my last name, Meri-Dor, which literally means the rebellion of the generation; And continued with a realization I had at a very young age, that any construct, mental or physical, is always in motion and is bound to be challenged at different times.  From scars in the body to plastic islands in the ocean, systems manage to define a new equilibrium without any judgment to the cause of change.  This made my playing ground both as a kid as well as an adult-artist and an architect a little bit unusual. My work ranges from the implications of manmade pollution to natural disasters, urban riots, nomadic living, a global economic crisis, to the implications of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs.  During this journey I discovered that all systems, even when altered to what we may think is a state of no repair, manage to find a new equilibrium and create a new set of boundaries. 

Not to worry, this realization didn’t make me a relativist that accepts everything. Yet, what it did, is made me look clearly without judgement at any provocation to natural or-manmade systems and frame the relevant questions that mostly do not coincide with the common believed ones.  My hope is that my work could make us see the implications of our footprint as humans differently, and provoke the basic paradigms of how we live and what is important to us.

'Daniel Meridor places us somewhere between hope and despair. Paused in time, we cannot be sure whether events are moving from a troubled world towards a more harmonious, serene one or the other way around. Or, whether he is depicting a world in which progress and decay, as well as technology and nature, coexist in a fragile, uncertain balance.'

- Lebbeus Woods, Utopia Redux

Nature is not a separate entity; we are not detached from it but are an integral part of an environment in which our actions continuously impact a system in a constant flux. One, which evolves and reproduces without prioritizing the existence of our species within it.  One, in which triggering a split of an atom releases enough energy to alter and make it uninhabitable for our own.

Why am I beautifying destruction?  I'm not interested in beautification per se, but the abstraction of such condition into a work of art detaches the viewer from what they are programmed to think of it.  This ultimately could lead to reconsider their paradigms.