Free Event
Content Warning: this installation contains flashing lights and laser technology. Please adhere to safety instructions displayed at the venue.
Stewart Worthy (UK, 1978)
Reclaimed Land (2025) 10’
“The sea keeps us alive, but at the same time, it slowly eats us up. It eats our memories and our culture bit by bit…”
— Grace Maile, Tuvaluan climate activist speaking in a 2023 (UNICEF sponsored report produced by Lasse Bak Mejlvang)
Reclaimed Land explores the complex environmental relationship experienced by the people who inhabit the nine Pacific atoll-islands that make up Tuvalu – the country predicted first to become uninhabitable due to sea level rise.
Video Credit: © Stewart Worthy
The Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) provides engineering solutions to protect some of the islands from sea level rise and increasing soil salinity. Using predicted inundation data from the TCAP dashboard, Worthy’s installation creates patterns projected onto a cast net like the ones used by Tuvalu’s fishermen, while another mesh-like material mimics the geotextiles used in the Coastal Adaptation Project’s giant sandbags. Light diffused through this material is derived from video footage from Tuvalu, as well as abstract patterns representing the sea and geological futures of the islands. Apart from one synthesised drone sound, all the audio material is derived from location recordings collected in Tuvalu including church bells, singing, and sounds from nature.
Reclaimed Land immerses audiences in a delicate, threatened world, combining art and data in a striking reminder of the stories at the frontline of climate change.
Co-produced by CEADA, CeReNeM and hcmf// with support from the University of Huddersfield
Part of Climate Ecologies: Responses to the Panicocene project and supported by The School of Arts and Humanities, University of Huddersfield. Location sounds were recorded by Charles Rose (Chasseur de sons) and licenced from artlist.io
Photo: © Stewart Worthy