Showing
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In the Wesley Wing, Japanese artist Ai Iwane's The Opening (2022–) was created along the Mattole River in Northern California, where the artist spent her high school years. Her drone footage and photographs follow both the people connected to the river and a dramatic annual event: each autumn, a sandbar blocking the river breaks open, reuniting it with the sea and allowing native salmon to swim upstream.
Accompanying photographic work honours decades of community-led restoration that made this possible. Iwane extends her lens to the forests of Mount Hakkōda in Japan, where ephemeral snowmelt streams appear only in spring — a quieter echo of the Mattole's fleeting opening.