The exhibition “Ocean – The World is an Archipelago” stems from a fundamental premise: that life, in all its forms, is intelligent and that this intelligence is also manifested in the ocean depths. The exhibition revisits the ocean as our origin, recovering memories that connect us to the moment when the first organisms transformed the planet and produced the air we breathe. An invitation to experience this ancestry through sensory environments that simulate the light, texture, and movement of the waters.
The exhibition unfolds around the themes of "Memory," "Attention," and "Anticipation," aligned with UNESCO's "Seven Principles of Ocean Literacy," which affirm the existence of a single global ocean and its decisive influence on climate, the proliferation of life on Earth, and the diversity of ecosystems. These principles take shape in the exhibition rooms: in "Dive," the public begins the journey in an environment that seeks to activate memories of origin and immersion. The room is almost entirely dark, with light and images of the water coming from above, to give the sensation of being underwater.
In “Life,” the public encounters everything from microscopic organisms to giant species, such as the seven-meter-long orca skeleton—donated for the exhibition by the National Museum—suspended in the main hall accompanied by mapped projections of the species; in “Edge,” the ocean is presented in a structure on the ceiling of the room as an attentive system, sensitive to human pressures, whose responses—such as the rise in sea level—reveal its intelligence and ecological agency.
The journey culminates in “Archipelago” and “Shipwreck,” spaces that articulate art, science, and imagination to discuss the relationship between humanity and the ocean. While Archipelago brings together contemporary works that explore the cultural, symbolic, and affective connections with the sea—understood as a “waterway that unites us” on a planetary scale—Shipwreck presents an environment of instability in which words emerge and disappear in the foam projected onto the floor, representing collective behaviors that we need to abandon to build more sustainable futures. The installation “Crossing, a collective effort” concludes the circuit with the metaphor that navigating other futures is a necessarily shared gesture.
The exhibition “Ocean – The World is an Archipelago” is curated by Fabio Scarano.
Camila Oliveira and Caetana Lara Resende.
