Catch of the Day, Mazatlan, Mexico 2018
I have been interested in water for some time now. Water connects everything on our planet, through the atmosphere and oceans. We are touched by water every day to survive, through the air we breathe and what we eat. We couldn’t survive without water yet we don’t take care of our water. I have been tracing the stories and pathways about water through various elemental forms. By this I mean from the atmosphere to the ground, from the ground to the sea or from the atmosphere through our bodies or plants. I am calling this “tracing water” and the ideas are starting to emerge as exhibition like this one. “catch of the day”.
Over the last 3 years I have done residencies both in Europe and Morocco, tracing the pathways of Water. The exhibition I am installing here in Mazatlan is derivative of the work I started in the southern coast of Spain. I went to Rota, Spain to look at how the ocean tides could leave marks on paper and I got totally diverted by the tidelines and how much plastic I saw. The tidelines became the drawings I worked with and each tideline told the story of the days tides and what came to shore. A series of 10 boxes of children toys-toys that I found washed up on the beach are in this exhibition—as well as a series of “LOST” posters. perhaps if we took better care of the things we had we wouldn’t throw them away and have to buy more. This is all part of the story of our consumerism.
My research into plastic in the ocean has been overwhelming and depressing despite the fact that many good solutions are being developed for clean up. We really just have to stop. We need to look for alternatives and most of all change our consumer habits.
Plastic does degrade in the ocean to become a kind of soup that is almost impossible to clean up. The microscopic filaments and chemicals they release are ingested by microscopic creatures that are in turn eaten by larger ones and so on. This bio-accumulation ends with us and we are probably ingesting more plastic and chemicals than we know. In the exhibit you can read a series of 8 letters that were written from the Oceans perspective. If you were one of the Sea goddesses in the department of human plastic and waste, what message would you send to humanity. This is an idea I would like to develop further- it was quite fun to develop.
My job as an artist is to raise awareness and maybe pose a few questions from different perspectives. I don’t have the solutions but I believe we have the capacity as humans to do so as long as there is public and political will to support these changes. Something has to change. The health of our planet is crucial for our survival. I have seen beaches in other countries- and this depends on the currents that are nearby because even pristine environments are getting tons of plastic on their shores. WE are all connected!!!!
I am grateful to the Museum for letting me develop this work here in Mazatlan. I am also grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting my travel here.
Article published in Artists and Climate Change…