Future Artifacts
2023-ongoing
Drawing inspiration from aquatic life forms and marine life ancestors, this series imagines the relics and remnants of alternative timelines of migration and labor, speculating on a mythologized civilization holding reverence for their aquatic ancestry. These pieces imagine a divergent lineage of ancestors were free to write their own destinies as if colonial powers hadn’t invaded and intervened.
Photographed in the waters of Aptos Creek (site of 1800s Chinese settlement, referred to as Arroyo del Chino) and in the fossilized tide pools of New Brighton Beach, formerly known as China Beach until 1933. These sites served as Chinese settlements that housed railroad, farming, and fishing laborers in Santa Cruz during the 1870s and 1880s, at the height of anti-Chinese sentiment in California that eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
