Inundation: Contemporary Art and Climate Change in the Pacific (review)

Inundation: Contemporary Art and Climate Change in the Pacific opened in January 2020 at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (uhm) Art Gallery. Curated by Jaimey Hamilton Faris, uhm associate professor of art history and affiliate faculty of the uhm Center for Pacific Islands Studies, the exhibition featured the work of Mary Babcock, Kaili Chun, DAKOgamay, Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, James Jack, Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, Charles Lim, and Angela Tiatia. It also featured multimedia excerpts from Christina Gerhardt’s upcoming book project and a robust program of artist talks, symposia, and a local iteration of the community-based art project High-WaterLine, initiated by Gerhardt and co-organized with Adele Balderston of 88 Block Walks.

A climate justice perspective drove the exhibition, which focused on rising sea levels in the Pacific Ocean as a result of global anthropogenic climate change. The opening wall label explained that the exhibition reimagined the ocean not (only) as a threat but as an “immersive, powerful, energetic, and undulating space of sensation and connection.” This was the aim of Tiatia’s video works Lick and Holding On (2015), which greeted viewers as they entered the gallery. In Lick, Tiatia lies down on a stone platform that protrudes into the ocean, waves splashing onto the artist’s prone form as the tide gets higher. This intimate interaction between the artist’s body and the water reflects the centuries-long relationship Pacific Islander communities have had with the ocean—a relationship built on trust and partnership rather than one that only leads to catastrophe.

In a small room around the corner from Tiatia’s films was Sounding (2020) by Jetn̄il-Kijiner and Enomoto. To enter the room, viewers had to weave their way through a curtain of pandanus baskets hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the space hung a sounding line, a long piece of cord with a metal weight at the end, which was historically used to determine the depth of the ocean floor by measuring sonic waves. Today, the sounding line has been replaced by sonar technologies used by the US military and mining companies. The resulting sound pollution has devastating effects on marine life, an issue addressed on the far side of the small room, where a large depiction of a humpback whale stretched across the wall. The whale’s body was constructed out of paper cutouts from official reports on the impact of military activity and sound pollution on whale populations in the Pacific Ocean. To counteract the sound of militarism and mineral extraction, a recording of Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s voice filled the room as she recited “Beached,” a new poem written for this piece.

James Jack also engaged with the impact of US militarism on oceanic environments in Sea Birth Three, Spirits of Ōura and Home for Pīdama (2020). The third iteration of a long-term series, the piece included an ink mural depicting a panoramic view of Henoko-Oura Bay in Okinawa, the site of a US Marine Corps base. Adjacent to the mural, the film Sea Birth Three (2020) explored various perspectives on the army base project, from those of activists to that of an endangered sea turtle. Territorial expansion, whether through military activity, resource extraction, or otherwise, was a recurring theme throughout the exhibition. Charles Lim’s SEA STATE 9: proclamation (2017), for example, focused on a legislative act in Singapore—a remnant of British colonial rule—that lays claim to new territory built through land reclamation off the coast. Mary Babcock similarly engaged with territorial claims to oceanic space in Lotic Sea (2020), in which the artist delicately stitched the outlines of Exclusive Economic Zones (eezs) onto a large curtain of wax paper that acted as a map of the Pacific. eezs are areas around a coastline to which a state has exclusive rights, and in this work, Babcock materialized the way Oceania, a...