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The Rooted Sea: Halophytic Futures
Sonia Mehra Chawla
The project stems from two incongruent yet interwoven futuristic imageries of anthropogenic impact on the planet: the desiccated planet and the submerged world. By mapping these two contrasting scenarios (droughts and floods), this project brings into focus the organisms and technologies that inhabit these spaces, while exploring the intertwined ecologies of human and nonhuman lives through entanglements of nature, culture, politics, industry, and economics.
Exhibition Launch: Friday 8th April 2022 | 18:00 – 21:00 | Summerhall Gallery Bar | Drop in
Opening times: Saturday 9th April 2022 – Thursday 9 June 2022| Wed – Sun | 12:00 – 18:00
Where: Summerhall | War Memorial and Sciennes Galleries
Tickets: Drop in | FREE, donations welcome
Audience: Ages 14+
Presented by Summerhall and ASCUS Art & Science
The Rooted Sea: Halophytic Futures
Sonia Mehra Chawla Artist Talk

When: Saturday 16th April 2022| 13:00 – 14:00pm
Where: Online via Zoom Sign Up
Tickets: FREE, donations welcome, booking essential
Audience: Ages 14+
This event includes a film teaser screening, followed by an artist’s talk and conversation between Sonia, Miriam Walsh (Member of ASCUS Board of Directors) and Dr Keira Tucker (ASCUS Lab Manager). Join us as we delve into the process of the making of the project and film, and hear from the artist herself as she asks ‘How can we leverage the power of science, technology, and the arts in a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to help give coastal wetlands and their microbial worlds a warming, collective voice? How can we build a system that puts care-based labour at the core of an entangled more-than-human biosphere?’
The project and immersive video installation was recently launched at the mega art, science and technology exhibition ‘Driving the Human’ at Radialsystem Berlin. (A joint initiative of ZKM | Museum & Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Forecast Berlin, acatech and HfG Karlsruhe)
Images courtesy of Sonia Mehra Chawla
Read more about the other Bioverse exhibitions here