![\"person](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Nelson_SJMA_2000.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u2018a small ocean swallowed\u2019 is an unabashedly feminist ecological show at the SJMA.<\/p>\n
Jul 20, 2026<\/p>\n
Updated 4:54 pm PT<\/p>\n
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A visitor looks at Erin Jane Nelson’s work in ‘a small ocean swallowed’ at the San Jos\u00e9 Museum of Art.\u00a0(Frederick Liang\/SJMA)<\/p>\n
Decades of settled science and even cultural consensus haven\u2019t saved us from climate change<\/a>. Four years after two Just Stop Oil activists threw tomato soup on Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s Sunflowers, their jail sentences have passed and thousands have died in heat waves in Europe. Yet another research paper is unlikely to spur collective action.<\/p>\n Curator Talia Heiman has organized the exhibition around hydrofeminism, a proposal of cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis that asks us to imagine ourselves as bodies of water. The concept pushes beyond hokey calls to love the earth and the easily ignored, measured language of scientists. Relinquishing hierarchy abolishes both the idea of humans as earth\u2019s custodians (\u00e0 la Adam and Eve) as well as humans as authorized extractors of natural resources (\u00e0 la capitalism). An equalitarian aqueousness could wash away boundaries, leaving pure connection in its wake.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an intriguing proposition. In Sunaura Taylor<\/a>\u2019s pen and watercolor drawings of aquifers, the underground waters turn anthropomorphic. The water becomes outstretched human hands reaching towards the roots of a tree. The drawings form part of Taylor\u2019s account of her Tucson community\u2019s successful efforts to heal their aquifer after it was poisoned by illegal dumping from a missile producer.<\/p>\n Even the entrance corridor to the exhibition invites a hydrofeminist experience. Blue light suffuses the space, submerging a visitor\u2019s body. This, coupled with artist Sholeh Asgary<\/a>\u2019s soundscape Anahita II, produces the feeling of oneness with the water. It\u2019s a little more complicated than summer days pausing beneath the pool surface though.<\/p>\n The dark blue hallway is part of Asgary\u2019s installation, which references the tradition \u2014 still practiced in some parts of Iran \u2014 of having widows marry a failing qanat (aqueduct) in times of drought. The widow marrying the qanat swims in its waters to restore the flume. Their presence is registered in plaster hands emerging from cloudy waters (i.e., the gallery walls). These widows are powerful figures who could save their communities, but they are also the people burdened with responsibility. The qanat-marrying widow demonstrates the need for a feminist understanding of ecological concerns.<\/p>\n Kiyo Gutierrez<\/a> also takes on imperiled waters in nepantlera, a 13-minute video work that explores waterways as harmful borders. Dressed as a nepantlera, a hybrid sea creature\/water goddess developed out of the anthropological idea of nepantla<\/a>, a space between cultures, Gutierrez swims through the Pacific Ocean, the Colorado River and Gila River. The barbed wire and border fences visible along the shores are the legacy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the US\u2013Mexico war in 1848, designating these waters as zones of separation rather than communion.<\/p>\n Gutierrez destroys the treaty in multiple ways: tearing pages, chewing them, drowning them in waters. She blots out the words with elderberry liquid. \u201cWhat she\u2019s really doing is rejecting this idea that water could ever be a tool of division,\u201d explained Heiman, the show\u2019s curator.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to do a show about water because everything becomes a metaphor,\u201d Heiman said with a laugh. Yet therein lies the brilliance of the concept: water is the H\u2082O we drink, the force that carved the Grand Canyon, and an endless font of metaphors orienting our relationship to the world. a small ocean swallowed takes a step towards making the metaphorical material, guiding us to see our irrevocable connection to this world\u2019s oceans, rivers, rain and waterways.<\/p>\n![\"skeleton](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/55237100234_cecc2b1500_o.jpg\")
Patricia Belli, \u2018Recuerdos,\u2019 2022; Video, 8:24 min.<\/p>\n![\"fish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/55236854201_7286c70d5a_o.jpg\")
Jessie Homer French, \u2018Oil Platform Fire,\u2019 2019; Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches.<\/p>\n