In this April's "In Depth" section we talk about "The Blue and Us", a collective exhibition that invites citizens to rethink their relationship with research and the sea.
During the UN Ocean Decade Conference held this April in Barcelona, the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) organized The Blue and Us, a collective exhibition of art and science that aims to explore our relationship with the ocean through different artistic languages.
The works, created by independent artists and entities linked to the ICM, showed different approaches to the oceanic topics and surprised the public that visited the centre during the conference week. In the current context, which requires forcefulness to face present and future challenges, transdisciplinarity makes it possible to create new narratives and reach new audiences, generating impact and alternative dialogues.
The exhibition, curated by Elisabetta Broglio and Vanessa Balagué, from the Art and Science group of the ICM, is the first one organized within the framework of the Art and Sea for Social Change line of the ICM, linked to the Barcelona Mar de Ciència program.
The initiative seeks to change the relationship of citizens with research and the sea and will include a series of activities aimed at involving different social agents locally and internationally, thus demonstrating the centre’s firm commitment to social engagement.
Invited artists and institutions
Among the participating artists is the geologist and photographer Xavi Bou, who has started the project Planktographies in collaboration with the ICM researchers Magda Vila and Albert Calbet. This project emerges as an extension of his previous work Ornithographies, where the artist explored the flight of birds for nine years. After recognizing the fascinating patterns in the movements of other animal groups, the author now extends his research to the microbes of marine plankton, where given the microscopic scale of these beings, the photographer has had to employ different recording methods than those used previously.
On the other hand, the visual artist Anna Rierola presents the project Aura Marium in Oceani, developed in collaboration with researchers Marco Talone and Eva Flo. This project is an allegory of the power of the ocean that highlights its biological, ecological and spiritual importance. From the research of satellite images used in Ocean Colour presents each sea and ocean as interconnected components of a single body of water, a global oceanic unit with its own identity, to alert us to the danger to the planet's climate and ecosystems of having a fragmented vision. Using the idea of colour as a language, the artist searches for evocative passages from universal literature, creating a series of pantones where the words dialogue with the images used to create the art works.
In addition, other invited artists and institutions were part of The Blue and Us, as Paola Idrontino with White Coral. The textile sculpture of this costume designer, textile and visual artist, portrays the coral bleaching caused by climate change. Made entirely by hand with a variety of fabrics, most of them recycled, it is part of a series of anthropomorphic creatures dressed from marine inspiration that question the relationship between humans and nature.
One of the invited institutions was QUO ARTIS, dedicated to fostering links between art, science, technology and ecology. The foundation provided two artistic works: The Hidden Nomad that Nourishes Us -a video sculpture by Swiss visual artist Katja Loher consisting of a video inside a hand-blown glass piece where a dialogue is created between dance choreographers and microscopic images of plankton, and Aquatocene / Subaquatic Quest for Serenity -an audiovisual piece by Robertina Šebjanič that explores the phenomenon of man-made underwater noise pollution in the ocean.
Finally, Good Karma Projects presented four photographs from the exhibition MED2050: More fish than plastics in the sea, where environmental action, scientific research and social awareness come together through the inspiring stories behind the projects that strive to address the major environmental challenges of the Mediterranean.
