Hear from the artists

Narrator: On January 10, 2018, the artists in Between the Waters got together for an online roundtable. You can find an edited transcript of their conversation on whitney.org. Here, we’ve woven together some of the thoughts they shared.

 Torkwase Dyson: To talk about what it means to be on a planet where the water is constantly in a state change, and then making paintings that have to do with the color and the state change of light and the physical sciences, is what I'm trying to think about through the work.

Demian DinéYazhi´: This whole video is about about migration, indigenous identity, and these ideas that surround your homeland.

Erin Jane Nelson: I've been documenting along the southeast coast, because I feel like it's this place where European colonialism and racist white supremacy is becoming consumed by the ocean again, and being swallowed up by the climate change that its hubris is put in motion.

Lena Henke: I think I'm interested in more interchangeable landscapes, where the relationship between the viewer and the physical foundation of urbanism becomes visible for the viewer then.

Demian DinéYazhi´: I think of my work more as a framework for heading toward language that is already on its way to being fully formed. A lot of the trans and queer community has this language. A lot of intersectional communities are building upon this language, so the work is more in conversation with that.

Erin Jane Nelson: It is about my imagination and speculation and contending with histories. I’m hoping that it’s not one where it’s all about my desires for these spaces.

Cy Gavin: My experience of Bermuda was reactionary in some way to my religious upbringing and becoming disabused of a feeling, like something made in God's image, and actually feeling that I'm of the environment.

Carolina Caycedo: I prefer the word "sustenance" for my work. I think it has to do more with support and nurturing.

Lena Henke: Culture and nature are like equal parts for me, and, therefore, I'm interested in this kind of impact on the environment. And then especially going over to the body, which I would probably translate into something which I would call sculpture.

Carolina Caycedo: I participate in activism through art making, through the construction and the deconstruction of images. That's what I know to do. I guess, also, to make art for me is like the way I'm a citizen, too. It's the way I participate and build society.

Torkwase Dyson: The reason I make the work that I make is to understand a systemic order around state changes as they happen, as we deal with our planet. What that means is, how as humans begin to interact—to form or use or participate with our natural environment—how do those things, then, support our lives?