A Curatorial Perspective on Two Objects

Brackish Water Los Angeles looks at the ecosystems, infrastructures, and politics surrounding brackish water, which refers to the space where salt and fresh waters meet. The project also considers the larger implications of in-betweenness, including issues of access, inclusion, ecological racism, and cultural/class system interchanges along Los Angeles' waterways.

Through the use of a double-sided lightbox and mirrors, Alfredo Jaar’s installation Untitled (Water) E (1990) suggests the human connection to the inbetween state of brackishness. By displaying an image of liminal waters outward and migrant portraits inward, the mirrors offer a window into someone else through the dual reflection of a migrant and a gallery visitor.

The materiality of Shinique Smith’s Forgiving Strands (2016-18) speaks the language of what may be found downstream when the river flows in the ocean. A riot of color, form and texture, the undulating work celebrates the new opportunities of its material form. This suspended work is lovingly crafted from hundreds of textile objects that embrace a multiplicity of identities to create a tertiary (brackish) space.

Both of these pieces consider what it means to display or create a liminal, brackish, in-between space. They raise questions not only of what these spaces are and feel like, but how we value them and engage them. The project is invested in these exact inquiries, looking to water systems as an entry point to consider ecological racism, what gets lost or found in the downstream, and how we place value on the natural world.

Exhibition page.