ART AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The Chrysler Museum — itself often plagued by flooding — exhibits new works that highlight rising sea levels and environmental action
The Chrysler Museum of Art is no stranger to flooding.
On any given day with a high tide or following a storm, staff and visitors can expect to see water pooling around the building, which sits across from the Hague, or blocking streets that lead to it.
With a pair of new exhibitions, the museum is putting the issue even further at the forefront.
The “FloodZone” exhibit features the absorbing work of a Florida photographer capturing the relationship between rising waters and urban development. The other, “Waters Rising,” focuses on Hampton Roads, using research out of Old Dominion University’s Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience. Both are on display through May 29.
Together they’re intended to inform the observer as well as provide a glimpse of what’s to come.
“Focusing on climate adaptation, and sea level rise in particular, is actually part of our strategic plan,” said Seth Feman, Chrysler’s curator of photography and deputy director for art and interpretation. “We know that we are in a unique position to think about how art and the environment can come together because of where we’re located.”
Feman started thinking about such an exhibit several years ago after coming across the work of Anastasia Samoylova.
“FloodZone” features a hallway full of photographs by Samoylova, who grew up in the Soviet Union before arriving in Miami in 2016.
After living through Hurricane Irma shortly after her arrival, she captured a moment in which her young son was wading through floodwaters in a garage.
That’s the moment that sparked her larger project, according to Feman.
“Through daily walks I began to realize how the city’s seductive tropical palette and quality of light concealed the growing dissonance between its booming real-estate market and the ocean’s encroachment on its shoreline,” Samoylava wrote on her website. “Ocean
views are prized in the real-estate world, with little regard for building projects’ locations in highrisk flood zones. Investors seem to turn a blind eye to the reality that Miami is steadily slipping underwater.”
Living in Miami looks like paradise, she wrote, “but the only secure roots belong to mangrove trees.”
Her work often asks the viewer to figure out what’s real. A self-portrait included in the collection, for example, includes a window reflection with overlapping images of a sunset, plants and a gecko.
Several pieces feature images of construction privacy screens that display utopian visions of a modern-looking development or tropical scene. Look closer, however, and you’ll see overgrown plants creeping up from the bottom or abandoned equipment in the corners.
“Some of the images are really hard to parse,” Feman said.
Others are more straightforward, such as an image of a pool with leaves scattered on top after a hurricane. There are even a couple of local scenes from the Chesapeake Bay’s Tangier Island depicting minor flooding and the island’s famous crab trade.
Though the concept started with Samoylova’s work, Feman said the Chrysler wanted to include a companion exhibit that was more locally focused.
A 2016 exhibit had featured aerial photography by Edward Burtynsky of landscapes impacted by either too much water or not enough. The museum received feedback from visitors who wanted to know more about the issue locally and how they could make a difference.
An ODU analysis underlying the “Waters Rising” exhibit includes flood predictions first initiated a few years ago by state officials working to develop a Coastal Resilience Master Plan. The ODU team used federal data to model flood risk in coastal Virginia across three markers of time: 2040, 2060 and 2080.
Zoom into the maps of Hampton Roads and the Chrysler is smack dab in the red, representing the highest risk from rising tides.
The interactive maps are displayed in the exhibit via lenticular prints. Think of those paintings where the eyes of the subject seem to follow you. In the lenticular map version, as you pass by, the colors shift to show flooding risk over coming decades.
Other parts of the exhibit aim to inform, including descriptions of how sea level rise is happening and why people should avoid playing in floodwaters, as well as first-person accounts of the emotional impact of flooding threats.
The final section outlines ways people can get involved and take action, such as switching to energy-efficient light bulbs and avoiding single-use plastics.
“A lot of people who are aware of the issue also feel helpless against it,” Feman said.
It often seems as if residents are waiting for massive, “Hail Mary” solutions that only governments can do, he said, such as building an enormous floodwall.
“While I think advocating for those things is important, and certainly we put that forward here as something that you should do, if you feel strongly about this, you should get engaged,” he said. “There is a lot that people can do individually and personally in their lives. And we wanted to at least alert people to that kind of information, so we can reach some more people and get them excited about what they can do.”