On the museum wall, the dried seaweed lies suspended in a moment of stillness, a fragment of the Pacific’s relentless rhythms of tides and life. Each pinned frond bears the marks of its encounters—waves, sand, sunlight, and decay—embodying the entangled histories of oceanic ecosystems. This work evokes the precarious beauty of multispecies worlds, inviting us to consider the fleeting intersections of nature, culture, and art. Pressed and preserved, the seaweed becomes both relic and story: a testimony to the fragile continuities between coastal landscapes and the human imagination that seeks to hold them.
“Wrack” is the term for seaweed, surfgrass, driftwood, and other organic materials produced by coastal ecosystems that wash ashore on the beach. Installed at the Cameron Art Museum in North Carolina for Confluence, an Algae Society: Bio Art & Design exhibition.