The Seven Circuits of a Pearl

My project seeks to investigate one of the most ancient sources of pearl fisheries on the Western Australian coast, where the Great Sandy Desert meets the Indian Ocean and where two centuries after the European Explorations of Christopher Columbus, William Dampier, became the first European to discover pearl beds in Australia, around the coast of Shark Bay in 1699. In the long history of humans and pearls, going back to 7000 years ago, this part of the world has not been brought to light in its entirety. As a visual artist and researcher, I aim at bringing together historical narratives and material cultures connecting the past with the present of pearl fishing, as developed alongside the human relationships to the sea and the consequent cultural worlds and set of practices built around geographies and ecologies of the ocean. Examining archives, maritime exploration journals and archeological evidence, I reflect on the multifaceted and multimodal exchange, trade and commodification of pearls in relation to broader histories of empire, labour management and marine ecology, questioning not only whether humans exist in relation to history, but instead how to access and write the history of this relationship in contemporary art as an emergent response to an ecosystem and cultural heritage in crisis.