May 2022 - Image of Research Competition Winner

Surface Tensions: Fieldwork Reflections on the Commodification of the Ocean

This year, my work came in first place during the Graduate College’s campus wide Image of Research Annual Competition. As an environmental sociologist, the key challenge of my work is to bring nature and human beings into conversation. My artistic practice has helped me dive beneath the surface tensions between social groups and our natural world. This piece was constructed out of photographs I made during one year of fieldwork in California. This image reflects the politics of seawater desalination, the process of transforming the ocean into potable water. Coastal cities must contend with the question of how to justly produce water for its growing populations in the context of climate change. Like the research process itself, I have folded and shaped my experiences to create a tableau that expresses the multiple stakes of the issue: the commodification of the ocean, recreation, tourism, technology, pollution, and social inequality in the access to water. I created this mixed media portrait with photographic gels, construction paper, water, money, archival documents, and photographic prints of my research. The materiality of water is also present, as it reflects and cuts through this pressing environmental justice issue.

Read more at: https://grad.illinois.edu/news/congratulations-2022-image-research-winners