This fall, UC San Diego will unveil Embodied Pacific, a multi-sited exhibition in partnership with the Getty initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

Embodied Pacific, a collaboration between UC San Diego’s Department of Visual Arts and Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, features artworks created by artists in partnership with scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and laboratories across UC San Diego, as well as with Indigenous community leaders in environmental and ocean science, engineering and design.

The exhibition spans multiple sites on the UC San Diego campus, including Birch Aquarium at Scripps and other community sites (see locations below). In a time of planetary crisis, the exhibition examines the intersection of oceanography and Indigenous knowledge and objects — such as Kumeyaay basket-making and full-sized tule reed boats—and imagines an intercultural approach to sustaining our oceans. Reaching audiences across San Diego and La Jolla, Embodied Pacific helps our community imagine a collective intercultural role in sustaining our ocean body in a time of critical change.

Birch Aquarium: 

• La Jolla Forest by Dwight Hwang and Oriana Poindexter with researcher Mohammad Sedarat of Smith Lab

• Project Flip by Rachel Mayeri, Research Platform FLIP (FLoating Instrument Platform)

• Embodied Simulation: The Air-Sea Interface by Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstadter, Scripps Ocean-Atmosphere Research Simulator

• Passengers of Change by Danielle McHaskell, Joe Riley, and Audrey Snyder, Smith Lab at Scripps

• Unbleached by Scott McAvoy, Sandin and Smith Labs at Scripps

• Mosaic Ocean by Judit Hersko, Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging

• Ha Kwaiyo by Stan Rodriguez, Kumeyaay Community College

• How to Look Into the Ocean by Claudine Arendt, Zooglider

• Radical Aquarium by Hans Baumann and Jamie Nisbet, Birch Aquarium at Scripps

• Fish Phone Booth by Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey

• Our Worlds by Catherine Eng and Kilma Lattin