Embodied Pacific is a four-year Getty PST ART: Art and Science Collide research partnership between UC San Diego Visual Arts and Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography foregrounding intersections of art and science in the history of oceanography, a field that shares with photography, biography, and typography a focus on graphical forms of knowing. Led by Lisa Cartwright and Nan Renner, Embodied Pacific features multiyear projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in SoCal and the Pacific Islands. 

In Three Lives at Gallery QI and Geisel Library, the works in this exhibition and a sister installation at Geisel Library approach the subjugated histories of three groundbreaking oceanographers: Easter Ellen Cupp, Anita Smith Hall, and June Pattullo—women who would have remained unseen in the history of oceanography but for a handful of archival materials held by family members and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, part of UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives. Three Lives is a curatorial effort of Lisa Cartwright, Joe Riley, Stephania Torres-Londono, Leandro Martínez Depietri, Clarissa Chevalier, and Stephania Torres-Londono sited at Gallery QI and the UCSD Library's art gallery. These exhibitions feature work engaging with what we know, and forms of knowing, about three key figures in the history of oceanography: Easter Ellen Cupp, June Oattullo, and Anita Hall, who are the subjects of projects by artists Amy Adler, Johnnie Chatman, Nicolas G. Miller, Lauryn Smith, and Jeffrey Stuker (on view at QI) and Judit Hersko, Kimberly Heard, Chanell Stone, Lauryn Smith, and Jeffrey Stuker (also on view at Geisel Library). These sister Three Lives exhibitions invite immersive engagement in questions about how we structure the histories of the hidden worlds that are the ocean and its little-known researchers. These projects recognize the power of rendering absence and the importance of interrogating our formal means of graphic documentation.

Please visit https://www.embodiedpacific.com for more information about Embodied Pacific and its other featured exhibit locations.

About PST ART: Art & Science Collide

Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 70 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art

RSVPs for this opening night event are requested to galleryqi@ucsd.edu. All Gallery QI events are free and open to the public. Three Lives will be open for viewing with the Gallery QI from opening night through December 6, 2024. Gallery QI is open M-F, noon to 5 p.m.