Brackish Waters

BRACKISH WATERS is the third of three projects to engage the resource industries of Vancouver Island (mining, forestry, and fishing) through contemporary art and writing.

Brackish waters mingle the fresh with the salt. Departing from industrial ports and shoreline ecosystems, this publication crosses oceanic worlds of extraction and distribution. It responds to marine environments diffracted by the perspectives of artists, writers, Indigenous Elders, fish and fishers, biologists, citizen scientists, whales, physicists, boat builders, ship workers, sailors, pirates, brittle stars, and other creatures of the deep.

Nanaimo Art Gallery is located on Snuneymuxw territory, one block from the city’s harbor, a place that has seen the forced displacement of Snuneymuxw villages, the arrival of precarious mine workers from China, the UK, and Scandinavia, and the World War II internment of Japanese Canadians who ran herring salteries and shipyards there.

Such harbors have also been places of exchange, where shipping news and seafarers’ stories were shared. BRACKISH WATERS is a similar waystation. Expanding from two exhibitions, Landfall and Departure: Prologue and Epilogue, it records globally interconnected aquatic lives and histories, while considering submerged narratives and forms of cultural expression.

Contributions by Doug Allen, Karen Barad, Michael Belmore, Walter Benjamin, Jesse Birch, Ocatvia E. Butler, Heather Cameron, Peter Culley, Stan Douglas, ELISA FERRARI, Masako Fukawa, Maxine Harris, Ayesha Hameed with Tom Hirst, Roni Horn, E. J. Hughes, Lili Huston-Herterich, Dawn Johnston, Eleanor King, Roy Kiyooka, Joy Kogawa, Xulsi’malt Gary Manson, Max Maynard, Michele Di Menna, OrcaLab, Marcus Rediker and Liz Park, Frances Ponge, NH Pritchard, Genevieve Robertson, Marina Roy, Willie Thrasher and Linda Saddleback, Emily Luce and Klehwetua Rod Sayers, Charles H. Scott, Allan Sekula, Jack Shadbolt, Fiona Tan, Tommy Ting, Hajra Waheed, Phyllis Webb, Lawrence Weiner, Jenni Schine and Jay White