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Kyra Nijskens (1997) examines the ways in which humans influence and reshape ecological landscapes. In her work, she lays bare the tension and mutual dependence between human intervention and ecosystems. The objects she creates feel both familiar and strange; they reflect the resilience of life that develops beyond human control. The Thief of Tides (2025) centres on biofouling: the process by which micro-organisms, plants and animals – such as oysters, mussels and algae – attach themselves to industrial surfaces like ship hulls and subsea pipelines. These are often invasive species that arrived unintentionally and are now regarded as disruptive and unwanted. In Nijskens’ work, they appear concealed within pipes and conduits: dazzling, compelling ‘beings’ that persist against all odds. In poetic texts written from their perspective, Nijskens gives them a voice. She describes how they cling and take shelter, how they hitch a ride unnoticed to new waters, where they disrupt the very industries that transported them there.
The Thief of Tides raises questions about how the lives of marginalized groups manifest when they are deemed undesirable. The cross-sections of filled backpacks also comment on logistical systems. Each year, an estimated 1,382 shipping containers are lost at sea. The consequences are as absurd as they are mythical: beaches strewn with Crocs or yellow rubber ducks that surface across the globe. Nijskens uses the backpack as a mini-container – an apparently sunken object filled with marine organisms and fragments of a lost cargo. A technofossil in which economy and ecology, decay and survival, human systems and autonomous life converge.
Written by Esther Darley