Flyer: Museum of Fishes & Greens, on view now through June 28th, River Center in Beacon, New York. Additional hours by appointment, contact eve@soonisnow.org
Carried by Hand: What the AI Inevitability Argument Leaves Out
Photography, Water, and the Fight That Is Coming
Substack post by Lesly Deschler Canossi, including review of the Museum of Fishes & Greens commissioned by Soon is Now, Beacon, New York
excerpted from here
A kind of refusal
As I write this, I am sitting in the Museum of Fishes & Greens, an exhibition presented and commissioned by Soon is Now, a climate and eco-themed arts organization founded by Eve Morgenstern, producing exhibitions, live performances, residencies, and artist-led workshops on the Hudson River/Muhheakantuck in Beacon, New York. Museum of Fishes & Greens is an immersive multimedia collaboration, made out of an exchange of ideas and art workshops between Food Studio Collective, a multidisciplinary group of artists, curators, and scholars from Kolkata and Shantiniketan, India, and women in fishing and farming communities in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. Bringing together batik sari textiles, handmade paper, a handcrafted book with data, memories, plants and recipes, and three films, this project explores the social, ecological, and cultural impact of food systems and climate change through art. The show features the handwork and personal stories of women in the Sundarbans, the biodiverse delta in West Bengal that climate change is actively dismantling.
In March and April of this year, with the support of the Food Studio Collective, these women made saris from their own drawings of fishes and plants, made paper from local vegetation, and recorded their recipes. The saris hang throughout the exhibition space, forming a kind of tent, loosely reminiscent of clotheslines, creating a warm and intimate environment for visitors to move through the flora, fauna, and fish of the Sundarbans. Handmade paper, made with locally foraged greens and fish parts, adds an unusual textural element, and original drawings by the women hang on moveable walls, giving the space the feeling of a working studio. Three films place you alongside the women as they forage, cook, create, and live. The result is an archive of knowledge - culinary, agricultural, and ecological - that the Sundarbans may not be able to hold much longer, translated into craft by the people who carry it.
Installation view: At Scenic Hudson’s River Center, Museum of Fishes & Greens, a multimedia collaboration on climate, craft and food by , artists and curators from Kolkata, and women from fishing and farming communities in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. Source
This installation allows us, 8000 miles away, to hear directly from the women as they wade into waters while navigating crocodiles and snakes, and into the markets where they sell what they have gathered. But the water itself is changing with rising salinity, driven by the Bay of Bengal pushing inland as sea levels climb, transforming the Sundarbans from the inside. The region sits at the confluence of hundreds of rivers and the planet’s largest mangrove forest, ecosystems that have long buffered these communities from the worst of what the ocean can do. But mangroves are being cleared for aquaculture, farming, and human settlement, and an estimated 20 to 35 percent of the world’s mangroves have been lost since 1980. As glaciers melt and temperatures rise, the delta’s capacity to hold back the sea shrinks. Work is already scarce. For many women here, wading in water in service of the fishing industry is one of the few options left.
Portrait of local collaborator: Gauri Mandal with original / enlarged drawing (in background), and printed sari detail from limited edition handcrafted cookbook: Recipe of Resilience, subtitle: Museum of Fishes & Greens, curated by Sayantan Maitra Boka
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