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Piscean Premonition is inspired by the masses of dead fish washed up on riverbanks and shorelines globally, almost monthly. Unable to pinpoint the cause, scientists explain these fatal events as "climate-related", calling them portents of things to come. But what happens when the final fish floats belly-up? How will these creatures be remembered? Who will tell the story of their life, and eventual demise?


 

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The artist envisions the cause to be salt, as fish are being found encrusted in salt on the saline shores of Great Salt Lake. You are invited to imagine yourself as a future human, discovering in this ruin an extinct aquatic species from a long-forgotten era of earth's balance-turned-turbulence. Contained within this salt-brick structure, embedded among the preserved fish, is a story of how we once lived and the world that once was.

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Fish often appear in myths and legends as symbols of fortune-telling. Here, they become prophets of a precarious planetary moment– our current moment. Experiencing this imagined future can inform our present; retelling histories can manifest a different future.

Reflecting on climate change through the prism of salt, Piscean Premonition evokes the different histories of Utah and the Southwest; of a time when it was an inland sea, of an ocean that has carried the traumas of so many bodies, of the healing potential of rebirth, afterlives, and the imperative to be good ancestors.

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While this ruin conjures a plausible future, it also references possibilities within the here-and-now. The fish, fired in a salt kiln and glazed with salt from toxic water bodies, are cast from moulds made from real tilapia. These ubiquitous fish are amongst the most salt-tolerant species and thus present a food source for a saline future. Salt bricks, likewise, represent an alternative to carbon-rich cement. Created with elements of earth and salt, this piece is infused with material ideas to meet the warnings it issues.

Text extract from the exhibition Salt Lines: Exploring Climate, Environment, and the Saline Influx by Hylozoic/Desires at Southern Utah Museum of Art

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Conceptualised by Himali Singh Soin and produced by Charly Blackburn at the Southern Utah University Ceramics Department - 2024

Many thanks to the Southern Utah Museum of Art 

Photo Credits: SUMA

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