Water connects us all with the Ocean. The rim of the Ocean is known to us. But the mysteries of the Ocean run deep. The stories of the ocean and its inhabitants are known to us and these stories are compelling in the way that they tease us about the expanse of the ocean that offers us so much more than we can even begin to imagine. If we begin to think with the Ocean, the Ocean whispers to us about revelations. But how do we relate to the Ocean, who gets to tell their stories? Who speaks for the Ocean?
In the current state of planetary crisis — massive outbursts of wars, scarcity of water, overconsumption, population increase, capitalist commodification, resources extraction, negation of multi species and vulnerable communities, climate change impacts draw a complex body of global networks and systems. Global politics are entangled and deeply rooted in colonial ties of the past but also in the present from neocolonial motivations. In the face of our planetary crisis, how can we take action?
Through ocean advocacy, contemporary art practices and curating as an experimental tool for knowledge reformation: common modalities and linkages of resistance movements are being mapped to counter Western epistemes, discourses and knowledge — there are no universals for fluid forms of critical inquiries for the ocean. ‘Ocean in Us’, borrowing the title from the Pacific scholar Epeli Hau’ofa stimulates in oceanic thinking and in this endeavor, Mekhala Dave in her Phd thesis explores ‚decoloniality‘ in theory and practice in the context of countering violence inflicted from extractivism and destruction of the ocean. She examines and confronts decoloniality from the scholar Rob Nixon’s ’slow violence‘ and archipelagic framework from the Pacific & Caribbean thinking and practices and how these translated into her co-curated experiential exhibition Undulating Currents: A Group Show which ran from November – December 2023 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The exhibition presented works of contemporary art from black diaspora, particularly, from ecofeminist, queer and indigenous lens, that touched upon the materiality of oil and water – the two of the most exploited resources of the ocean. The exhibition pressed on the need for conduits of decolonial discourse, different forms of curating as practice and knowledge from black art and history, often interpersed with indigenous knowledge systems, attempting to reveal hidden extractivist tendencies, and yet a collective healing power that deliberate thinking-with multiplural identities and multi-species harnessing from journeying across the sea during the great Slave trade. Her Phd thesis is positioned as a process from decolonial thinking, practice and praxis from the debates within the canon of contemporary art history, political underpinnings and social movements, to the delineation between theory and situated, embodied practice to expand on the emerging relations and rights for ocean stewardship.
Mekhala Dave is a lawyer and art academic based in Vienna. She is the ocean law and policy analyst/legal researcher at TBA21–Academy and a doctoral researcher in contemporary art history and theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In her past and current work in legal practice, as well as in her Phd research, she advocates for a social turn in artistic practices and explores encounters located across knowledge spheres and communities in the Global South at the intersection of activism and newly shaping ocean policy. From her lived experiences across borders, she draws inspiration and spiritual guidance from water to the questions of historicity and the search for emerging “new” relations of identity and belonging.
