'Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea' featuring John Akomfrah, MFA Boston, Boston, MA, USA
25 October 2024
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, 'Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea' exhibition follows a genealogical thread united by the sea. Echoes of John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778) reverberate in J. M. W Turner’s 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’s iconic three-channel film installation Vertigo Sea (2015) expands on the themes at the heart of the two earlier works, exploring humanity’s tumultuous relationship with the sea and its creatures, and the ocean’s role in the history of slavery. Akomfrah's film is shown alongside photography by Ayana V. Jackson, 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.
“Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea” 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—from 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.
From 9 November 2024 to 9 November 2025 at MFA Boston.
