Brackish Waters

On oceanic environments through contemporary art and writing.

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 serves as a similar waystation. Expanding from two exhibitions, Landfall and Departure: Prologue and Epilogue, this publication records globally interconnected aquatic lives and histories, while considering submerged narratives and forms of cultural expression.

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

Copublished by Nanaimo Art Gallery.