![Under a cloudy sky, a man sits in a chair in the corner of a beach littered with a desk, a bicycle, and other discarded household items.](https://d1nn9x4fgzyvn4.cloudfront.net/styles/576x432/s3/2024-07/SC478832_4x3.jpg?itok=Ricz9ts3)
Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea
![Under a cloudy sky, a man sits in a chair in the corner of a beach littered with a desk, a bicycle, and other discarded household items.](https://d1nn9x4fgzyvn4.cloudfront.net/styles/scaled_562_wide/s3/2024-05/SC478832_16x9.jpg?itok=l8IYv6j-)
John Akomfrah, still from Vertigo Sea, 2015. Three-channel HD color video installation, 7.1 sound. 48 minutes, 30 seconds. 漏 Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery.
![Under a cloudy sky, a man sits in a chair in the corner of a beach littered with a desk, a bicycle, and other discarded household items.](https://d1nn9x4fgzyvn4.cloudfront.net/styles/scaled_562_wide/s3/2024-05/SC478832_16x9.jpg?itok=l8IYv6j-)
John Akomfrah, still from Vertigo Sea, 2015. Three-channel HD color video installation, 7.1 sound. 48 minutes, 30 seconds. 漏 Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery.
Generations of artists have explored the beauties and terrors of the ocean, reflecting on the experiences of those who have lived and lost their lives among the waves. Weaving together artworks by four artists made over centuries and across the Atlantic, this exhibition follows a genealogical thread united by the sea. Echoes of John Singleton Copley鈥檚 Watson and the Shark (1778) reverberate in J. M. W Turner鈥檚 1840 Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), which itself has influenced art created in the 21st century.
Presented here for the first time in New England, John Akomfrah鈥檚 iconic three-channel film installation Vertigo Sea (2015) expands on the themes at the heart of the two earlier works, exploring humanity鈥檚 tumultuous relationship with the sea and its creatures, and the ocean鈥檚 role in the history of slavery. In Some People Have Spiritual Eyes I and II (2020), photographer Ayana V. Jackson takes these ideas in a new direction. Jackson鈥檚 exploration of divinity, femininity, and destiny through self-portraiture is inspired by Drexciya, a mythical aquatic utopia populated by descendants of the pregnant African women who lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Passage.
鈥淒eep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea鈥 invites visitors to consider and reflect on the conversation between these works of art and their makers. Each artist offers a unique perspective drawn from their lived experience, yet all are attuned to the poetics and histories of the sea鈥攆rom its glittering surfaces and unfathomable depths to its inhabitants and ghosts; from it as a site of memory, mourning, and fragility to a symbol of resilience and possible futures.
- Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332)