On Bodies of Water

Moving through the Body and Water exhibition at Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre feels like being transported into a space where time moves at a different speed. Curated by the Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, the exhibition features text from Halie Finney and Becca Taylor’s collaborative exhibition essay. Their words, printed large on the wall at the gallery’s entrance, prompt one to enter while holding an imagined storyline in mind:  

The water laps over in stillness reminiscent of a large blanket that extends into the sky covering you and inviting you deeper in. You carefully stand up from your spot and move closer to the edge. Crouching with one arm wrapped around your knees you extend the other arm out cautiously, dipping your fingers in and resting them amongst the wet stones.¹

I’m taken by how powerful this narrative strategy is, and how quickly I imagine myself sitting alongside a large, calm lake, watching water lap up against a sandy beach. At a time when it isn’t always easy to push anxieties and concerns aside, I’m mindful of how quickly this introductory text allows me to disarm and relax my shoulders, and how quickly I’m able to let the calm of this imagined body of water wash over me. 

Looking back now to what it felt like within the space of the gallery, I recall being reminded of how much I missed being near water. I remembered the frequent trips to the lake I used to take: fishing alongside my dad, standing quietly along the shore, awaiting a gentle tug on the line of my fishing pole. I recalled the loud yet calming rush of wind felt when sitting before the ocean in Northern California, a trip I made almost weekly when living in the region. Relying on the power that water has to reshape internal space, I came to see the journey as a sort of ritual, a reset that I still often long for. 

Mind and body are uniquely altered when spending time near water. That sense is acutely felt within the Body and Water exhibition, where storytelling, sound, and moving image work in tandem to transport viewers into a space that transcends linear time. 

Sitting between Hannah Claus’s and Lindsay Dawn Dobbin’s opposing video projections, the gentle sounds of birds from Claus’s all this was once covered in water (2017) play over headphones while loud lapping water from Dobbin’s Transitory Fish (2021) fills the room over external speakers. This auditory overlap creates a sense of depth reminiscent of the spatial complexity sound takes on when sitting near a large body of water, where sound seems to move in defiance of the visible difference between near and far.² The shift in proximity amplifies when Claus’s video comes to the end of its loop, and the sound of chirping birds fades into the distance for a moment. As the sound diminishes, the transition between near and far becomes even more prescient. Through careful attention to sound and the depths it can shape within a physical space, the exhibition conjures a sense of being elsewhere. I’m reminded of the ways that sound thickens in the height of summer when surrounded by water.³

The curatorial text hovers in the background as Claus’s video provides a tranquil view of shimmering river water lapping over stillness and extending to the sky. At the same time, on the wall behind me, Dobbin’s fingers dip into the clear waters of the Bay of Fundy. You can see the silt below the bay’s surface, and rays of sunlight give further presence to the rippling water. I recall the feeling of a gentle breeze when sitting alongside a lake, which I can only imagine as cool and calm. Slight manipulations to the video slowly enhance the water’s rippling, and as the artist’s hand gently moves, a visual echo helps give the sense of time expanding and contracting. I’m reminded of the feeling of being lost in the moment between past, present, and future in the way that can happen when one is lazily floating in water on a warm, sunny day. Within the Body and Water exhibition, I am also lost in the moment. 

Mind and body are uniquely altered when spending time near water. That sense is acutely felt within the Body and Water exhibition, where storytelling, sound, and moving image work in tandem to transport viewers into a space that transcends linear time. 

Printed on a floating screen, hung to create a false wall within the gallery, a second piece of curatorial text provides another narrative prompt: 

Everything is purple and blue except for the pieces of bright orange that are being reflected in the water from the last bits of sun on the horizon. The air feels cool, soft, and still. Everything is still, except for you.⁴

And as I move through the exhibition, with the sound of gulping water wafting through the air, the feeling of cool, soft, and still remains forever present. 

Jaime Black’s photographs, between worlds, Bundle, and between worlds 1 (all 2021) document a past performance, gesturing toward the way bodies of water hold on to memories and histories. This connection across history is further articulated in Finney and Taylor’s curatorial text:

Reflecting histories and connecting worlds. The water is the link, cycling within the atmosphere linking us with exterior and interior worlds moving through interconnected time.⁵

Deepening this attentiveness to memory and history, Paxsi’s bead and textile work shares a personal story of gathering rocks to later skip with a loved one, prompting a reminder of the relationship that water has to both land and deep time. Their story is expanded further in a short how-to video that shares the ways in which picking rocks might act as a practice of mindfulness. Presented online as parallel programming to the exhibition, the video responses made by each contributing artist offer further insight and reflections on water, memory, dreams, kinships, and connections across time. 

After leaving the gallery, I spend more time with Finney and Taylor’s curatorial text, reflecting on the ways that both it and the experience of the exhibition offer reminders to hold onto in daily life:

Moving at your own pace. Slow strides to not make waves. Careful steps to avoid slipping on the rocks.⁶

Originally part of a curatorial residency at Oxygen Artist Centre in Nelson, BC, the exhibition travelled to Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre in Edmonton from February 5, 2022 to April 9, 2022.

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Feature image: Lindsay Dawn Dobbin, Transitory Fish, 2021. Video still, water-based performance and sound project, Bay of Fundy, image courtesy of the artist.

Image Description: From the top of the frame, a hand reaches into water with palm facing front. The hand is caught in mid-motion, and the surface of the water is rippling in response. The silt from the bottom of the bay is visible under the blue-green water’s surface and a bright spot of light in the top left corner (perhaps a reflection of the sun) helps to illuminate the image.

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Christina Battle is BlackFlash Expanded’s Online Editor.

1. Curatorial text, Halie Finney with Becca Taylor, “A path to the water,” Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre, 2021.
2. The complex nature of sound over a body of water is primarily due to the temperature gradient above the water’s surface. Since the air just above open water is cooler than that slightly higher up, the speed of sound is slower at the surface. As the temperature changes moving higher, those sound waves further from the water’s surface move faster than those below them. Sedeer el-Showk, “No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound,” Inspiring Science Blog, August 14, 2013.
3. The temperature gradient that moves up from the surface is also why sound travels further over water: “less is lost up into the air, meaning more of it ends up in your ears — or your neighbors.” el-Showk, Inspiring Science Blog.
4. Finney and Taylor, A path to the water.
5. Finney and Taylor, A path to the water.
6. Finney and Taylor, A path to the water.