AQUARIA – Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea Exhibition
AQUARIA - OR THE ILLUSION OF A BOXED SEA EXHIBITION
2050+
ARCHITECTS
2050+
EXHIBITION DESIGN
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Massimo Tenan, Guglielmo Campeggi
GRAPHIC DESIGN
studio obelo: Claude Marzotto, Maia Sambonet
RESEARCH AND ARCHIVE ASSISTANCE
Martina Motta
EXHIBITION
MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology
LOCAL RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
Marta Jecu
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Lisbona, Goethe Institut Portugal
SPECIAL COMMISSION
by Armin Linke developed with the scientific support of: Oceanario de Lisboa / Fundacao Oceano Azul
ARCHIVE MATERIALS FROM
Biblioteca del Museo di Storia Naturale e dell'Acquario - Milano, Biblioteca Sormani - Milano, Historical Diving Society Italia, Biblioteca Central de Marinha - Lisboa, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Arquivo da Marinha Portugal, Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa, Aquário Vasco da Gama Lisboa, Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa
EXHIBITION CURATION
Angela Rui
PHOTOGRAPHS
Pedro Pina, Bruno Lopes, Laurian Ghinitoiu
YEAR
2021
LOCATION
Lisboa, Portugal
CATEGORY
Museum & Exhibition Interiors
Invented in the Victorian age – and responsible for a social phenomenon that became known as the “aquarium craze” – the domestic marine fish tank has never gone out of fashion. It continues to constitute an ocean diorama and private zoo, hosting a living collection that serves as our own personal representation of a very fictional marine world.
Curatorial Text by Angela Rui. After cats and dogs, fish are now the third most popular type of pet, but once removed from their natural habitat, transported around the world, and sold as domestic companions, their lives start to depend entirely on the object that contains them: a glass box designed to host living creatures unable to survive outside it.
Therefore giving rise to an animal-object coupling: a self-contained world and a techno-natural assemblage, all neatly integrated into our home furnishings. Aquaria – Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea is an exhibition that looks at how the ocean has washed up inside our cities, whether in our homes, dentists’ waiting rooms, shopping malls or our cultural institutions.
The process of interiorisation of the ocean kingdom – from the inward-looking object of public spectacle to that of home entertainment, right through to our own abstract mental concept of the ocean itself – is intrinsically bound up in our colonial and scientific notion of the taming of nature, converting wild animals and plants into integral parts of the household.
As often our only form of contact with the outside world, our fishbowl existence now begs comparison with the aquatic dimension we have created, once more calling into question our terracentric relationship with the sea sphere and the sense of detachment from nature inherent to both.
After months confined in our homes, to some degree we too are metaphorically floating inside isolated techno-tanks of our own, from which the world is now experienced in the form of image-based communication through the glass walls of our computer screens.
Organised from the microscopic right up to the transoceanic scale, the path unfolds through eleven new and revised works – presenting just as many ways to examine the interconnection with the aquatic sphere.
Therefore, the aquarium here is conceived as the conceptual object that allows us to lay bare the hierarchical mechanisms that have underpinned our culture of living outside of nature, and which also need to be revised through the deconstruction of linguistic and visual practices.
The term “illusion” found in the title of the exhibition refers firstly to the impossibility – in this particular moment of a global pandemic – of perceiving humans as biologically isolated from the environment. Paradoxically, it is the very need for isolation that brings home our indissoluble bond with nature.
Secondly, it is illusory to think that the portion of the sea which is extracted, walled in and controlled, the water of which mimics seawater through the addition of artificial chemicals actually is the sea. It is perhaps a conceptual sea, spatially represented by living animals removed from their vast natural environment and specific community.
And in turn placed into a fictional, limited (and boring) social experiment, unable to communicate the dynamic nature of the sea itself – made up of tides, currents, waves and depths to swim through. Thus, the catatonic rhythm of time that characterises aquaria is a mere shadow of a sea that is a far cry from the ocean.
Lastly, the architecture of the aquarium, ever since the nineteenth century, may be interpreted as a complex staging machine: thanks to the sophisticated climate control of the environment and improvements in technology (such as large, transparent and very high-performance viewing screens), the architecture melts away, and the sense of water and life inside the water begins to dominate the view.
The blue itself – that colour through which the human species identifies the liquid dimension of the planet – is even intensified by the specific lights and paints used both in domestic and public pools and aquaria, which would appear to bring about a sense of calm in the human body.
In the darkness of public aquaria, and in the ever-growing sense of total immersion, the common ground between aquarium and stage is intensified, letting the seamless sense of theatre emerge. So, where should we see from? How should we intervene in this world-making process that takes place when our vision becomes limited by what we see?
It requires a fundamental shift of perspective, in which the culture of design emerges as a critical practice that calls into question our conventional ways of inhabiting and experiencing the world, deployed solely on the basis of human control, the extraction of resources and the exploitation of other living beings. As 98% of ornamental fish are still caught in the wild, the aquarium – as a desiring machine – conceptually contains them all.
Through the orchestration of spatial and audiovisual installations, selected voices and archive materials, the exhibition reflects on possibilities and new issues that any rethinking of our relationship with the marine world might come up against.
Art, design and architecture here serve as tools for speculation, highlighting how the modern idea of living outside of nature has today become a paradigm to be deconstructed in order to contemplate a new form of situated knowledge – one in which knowing, feeling, experimenting and communicating potentially foster new forms of solidarity and justice towards others, adopting holistic and more than merely human perspectives.
At the same time, the very shape of the fish tank itself reminds us of the cabinet of curiosities: whether it contains animals or plants – the objects placed within for observation – they function through the mediation of glass walls, a material manifestation of our separation from what lies beyond, re-evoking those nineteenth-century patriarchal and colonial missions that sought not only to take control of animals from exotic or faraway places, but also to create visual narratives for the communication of knowledge.