"Forgiving Strands," 2016, Shinique Smith. Mixed media. Shinique Smith Studio.
Brackish Water Los Angeles
Aug
12
2024
Dec
13
2024
Dec
14
2024
Ecology and Environmental Justice

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.

CSU Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery

1000 East Victoria Street, Carson

MON-FRI:10am-5pm
SAT:12-5pm
SUN:CLOSED

For group tours:artgallery@csudh.edu
"Forgiving Strands," 2016, Shinique Smith. Mixed media. Shinique Smith Studio.
"Forgiving Strands," 2016, Shinique Smith. Mixed media. Shinique Smith Studio.
"Forgiving Strands," 2016, Shinique Smith. Mixed media. Shinique Smith Studio.
"Untitled Water (E)," 1990, Alfredo Jaar. Double-sided lightbox with two color transparencies, five mirrors. Galerie Lelong.
"Untitled Water (E)," 1990, Alfredo Jaar. Double-sided lightbox with two color transparencies, five mirrors. Galerie Lelong.
"Untitled Water (E)," 1990, Alfredo Jaar. Double-sided lightbox with two color transparencies, five mirrors. Galerie Lelong.

Discussion Questions

  • Through a lens of social and environmental justice, what relationships do lower-income communities in the LA region have with nature?

  • How does class and race create hierarchies in nature? (i.e. sitting by ocean water in Malibu versus sitting by an undeveloped portion of the LA River.)

  • What is nature and how is it defined?

  • What is the “wild?”

  • Can un-improvement be improvement?

  • What is research? Who is a researcher? What is effective and impactful research?

  • What information is deemed valuable?

Bibliographic References

Carson, Rachel. “Undersea.” The Atlantic Monthly, September 1937.https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1937/09/undersea/652922/
Geyer, W. Rockwell. “Brackish Water: Where Fresh Water Rivers Meet A Salt Water Sea.” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, September 16, 2019.https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/where-the-rivers-meet-the-sea/
Paya: The Water Story of the Paiutehttp://www.oviwc.org/paya-movie/