"Water Labor"

BEATRIZ YANES MARTINEZ, Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow

In Water Labor, Bolivian artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernández engages with textile materials and embroidery techniques to create a map that hypervisualizes global trade networks that go unseen in the world's oceans. The map was hand-embroidered by Aranibar-Fernández over the span of three years and features clusters of red and green sequins. To create this map, the artist referenced MarineTraffic—a maritime analytics provider that presents real-time information concerning the movement of ships around the world. The green sequins stand for shipping containers, while the red sequins refer to the transport of oil tankers.

This artwork captures the oversaturated shipping activity in the world's oceans. What motivated me to acquire this artwork was the multilayered elements that Aranibar-Fernández employs to visualize movements around the world, and specifically the way she creates a visual dissonance between the softness of the embroidery practices and the sequins versus the hardness of what they represent: oil tankers and shipping containers. The map thus serves as a site that invites viewers to grasp the magnitude of the transportation of commodities across the globe, and the impact that this activity has on our environment.

Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia, currently lives and works in San Francisco. She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her artistic practice is influenced by her experience of witnessing environmental exploitation in her homeland by foreign corporations. A multimedia artist, Aranibar-Fernández addresses environmental exploitation, systems of global trade, extractivism, land privatization, and oppressive labor systems.  

This artwork is featured in the upcoming exhibition [Un]Mapping: Decolonial Cartographies of Place.

Click here to view this object's catalogue entry.