The Ocean After Nature

For centuries, the ocean has prompted awe, figuring as a vast unknown space loaded with notions of the sublime and the exotic. In the past 15 years however, global technological and economic shifts have triggered new concerns and understandings of the ocean. As we consider the future of our planet, today's oceans reveal more about the consequences of human actions than ever before. The ocean and humanity, no longer thought of as separate, exist in a relationship of mutual and potentially destructive influence.

The Ocean After Nature considers the ocean as a site reflecting the ecological, cultural, political, and economic realities of a globalized world through the work of 20 artists and collectives. Curated by Alaina Claire Feldman, the exhibition proposes that seascapes do not only reflect power but can be instruments of power themselves. The artists in the exhibition explore new ways of representing the seascape as a means to identify and critique the various interrelated and chaotic systems of power, such as land-sea divides, the circulation of people and goods, and the vulnerabilities of our ecosystems. Invoking personal themes of identity and migration, alongside more universal concerns related to tourism, trade, and the exploitation of natural resources, the artists in The Ocean After Nature respond to the intertwined factors that define a new understanding of the ocean.

Artists Ursula Biemann, CAMP, Yonatan Cohen and Rafi Segal, Mati Diop, Drexciya, Peter Fend, Manuel Gnam, Renée Green, Peter Hutton, Hyung S. Kim, An-My Lê, Manny Montelibano, Deimantas Narkevičius, The Otolith Group, Ulrike Ottinger, Maria D. Rapicavoli, Carissa Rodriguez, Allan Sekula and Nöel Burch, Supersudaca, UNITED BROTHERS

Publication
Accompanying catalogue edited by Alaina Claire Feldman, published by ICI, designed by Geoff Kaplan / General Working Group. Contributors include: Negar Azimi, Ursula Biemann, María del Carmen Carrión, Övül Durmuşoğlu, Kodwo Eshun, Patrick D. Flores, Ed Halter, May Joseph, Lucy Lippard, Andrey Misiano, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, Lanka Tattersall, Sarah Wang, among others.