Across three exhibitions, the Sainsbury Centre asks if the seas can survive humanity
The Sainsbury Centre’s new approach of thematic seasons moves into watery territory with three interconnected exhibitions presented under the question Can the Seas Survive Us? Nyima Murry visited Norfolk to see the first two presentations of the series, group exhibition A World of Water and solo exhibition from Sāmoan-Japanese artist Yuki Kihara considering same-sex attraction & suppressed knowledge through fish & a dragged-up Charles Darwin.

Bringing together contemporary art, historical works, and scientific inquiry through three concurrent exhibitions, the Sainsbury Centre has launched its 2025 exhibition programme with an ambitious and urgent theme: Can the Seas Survive Us? As sea levels rise and ocean ecosystems collapse, the exhibition series is framed within the context of climate change, overfishing, and environmental degradation to offer a provocative exploration of how humanity’s relationship with the ocean can evolve in the face of such crisis.



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The three exhibitions, collectively curated by Curator of Art and Climate Change John Kenneth Paranada and running from March until October 2025, take a multifaceted approach, touching on themes of fluidity, colonialism, sustainable energy, and the transformative potential of the ocean as a resource. Central to these exhibitions is a recognition that small island nations – like the Maldives and Kiribati – as well as coastal communities in places like the venue’s home-county, Norfolk, are already experiencing first-hand the destructive impact of climate change.

A nation hyper-sensitive to the impact of climate change on our coastal landscape is the Netherlands, and it features prominently in the series’ opening exhibition, A World of Water, a rich, multifaceted exhibition that spans centuries of artistic responses to marine life. It opens with a standout work by Dutch artist Boris Maas, entitled The Urge to Sit Dry – precariously balanced on four spindly legs, an oak chair sits high in the air, elevated to the level of rising sea levels in the Netherlands by 2100. A twin of the work sits inside the Dutch environment minister’s office in the Hague as a constant reminder of the urgent threat of rising sea levels.



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Centring around the North Sea, the exhibition traces Norfolk’s historic ties with the Netherlands and the pre-historic landmass Doggerland that once physically connected these landscapes, before expanding to showcase global perspectives on marine ecosystems. Spanning several centuries, the exhibition showcases works by notable artists such as Eva Rothschild, Olafur Eliasson, and Julian Charrière, offering a deep dive into the ways artists have engaged with the ocean – both as a subject of beauty and a site of exploitation.

A curiosity is the 1641 landscape, View of Scheveningen Sands, by Hendrick van Anthonissen, a painting which sparked attention ten years ago when a previously hidden beached whale was uncovered by conservators at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Framed within a wider collection of 17th century Dutch Golden Age works, a relationship is traced between the Dutch Masters and East Anglia – the works inspiring the Norwich School of the 19th century where artists such as John Crome and Robert Ladbrooke adopted Dutch techniques to capture the region’s unique coastal landscape. The discovery of the beached whale in Anthonissen’s – hidden for over two centuries – transformed a formerly tranquil waterfront vista into a dramatic beach scene. Revealing changes in taste that resulted in a previous owner crudely altering the work over two-hundred years ago, the work chimes with a driving curatorial position within the exhibition – the ocean unmasked as not simply a backdrop for human experience, but a space deeply affected by our actions.



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Concurrently opening as the second exhibition within the season’s trilogy is Darwin in Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara – undoubtedly the standout exhibition. First presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale the Sāmoan-Japanese interdisciplinary artist brings a queer perspective to the discussion of colonial narratives and the human connection to the sea. Kihara up-cycles the works of French painter Paul Gauguin, reinterpreting images of Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands through the lens of Sāmoan identity and the Fa'afafine community, a third-gender group to which Kihara belongs.



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A highlight within the work is Darwin Drag, a new video work commissioned for the Sainsbury Centre’s presentation, that reimagines Charles Darwin's work on evolutionary biology. Housed in a traditional Sāmoan structure, the video piece follows Kihara in conversation with Darwin, who is separated from his Victorian values through transformation into a drag queen. Freed from society’s shackles, the work reveals the supressed knowledge of queer species and same-sex attraction in the animal kingdom, focusing on fish species from the Sāmoan archipelago such as clownfish and parrotfish, both of which exhibit Fa'afafine-like traits.

Betweeen-ness is a key concept within Kihara’s work, most evident in their “Vārchive” – an original concept coined by the artist that continues to grow through their research-led practice. Adopting the Sāmoan word “Va” to describe a space between things that connect by crossing boundaries of time and space, the exchange established through the situated between-ness offers critical space for reflection of both how knowledge of our oceans has been constructed, and how these systems continue to shape the communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change within coastal communities.

 


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The curation of this trilogy of exhibitions follows a new programmatic strategy of the Sainsbury Centre to curate seasonally, each series interrogating a broad, and often complex question. Previous seasons asked Why Do We Take Drugs? and What Is Truth?, with this year’s autumn exhibition going to raise the question Can Humans Stop Killing Each Other?

The final exhibition in this series, Sea Inside, will open on the 07 June, overlapping with both the curent exhibitions. Exploring the emotional and psychological aspects of the ocean, it will showcase works that uses the sea as a metaphor for human experience. Through casting a critical eye on the 70% of our planet that is the seascape, this first question asked of the new curatorial approach, Can the Seas Survive Us? is addressed in many ways. Art perhaps can’t provide answers to questions, but it can – as this series of exhibitions does – take us beyond the scientific and into the cultural. Here, through exploring the ocean’s role in sustaining life on Earth and humanity’s responsibility for its protection, questions are asked that go beyond the local context of East Anglia into shared experiences that may help us towards an understanding from which answers could arrive.



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The Sainsbury Centre is a world-class art museum with a unique perspective on how art canfoster cultural dialogue and exchange. Following a radical relaunch in 2023 the Sainsbury Centre is the first museum in the world to formally recognise the living lifeforce of art, enabling people to build relationships across a dynamic and interactive arts landscape.
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One of the first museums in the world to display art from all around the globe and from all time periods equally and collectively, Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury created one of the most sought after yet non-conformist art collections. In 1973 they donated their collection, which transcended traditional barriers between art, architecture, archaeology and anthropology, to the UEA, and created an entirely new type of museum. Housed in Sir Norman Foster’s revolutionary first ever public building, the space aimed for an interactive relationship between
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Nyima Murry is a British-Tibetan curator, design writer and filmmaker. Trained as a Landscape Architect, her work often deals with the intersection of art, architecture and landscape, reflecting the space in which her practice occupies. Nyima is a founding member of PATCH Collective, a BIPOC design collective who organise public events that engage with the built environment from the perspective of being of diaspora.
www.nyimamurry.com

visit

Three concurrent exhibitions explore Can the Seas Survive Us?
A World of Water, until 03 August
Darwin in Paradise Camp: Yuki Kihara, until 03 August
Sea Inside, from 07 June until 26 October

Further details are available at: www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/whats-on/can-the-seas-survive-us

images

figs.i,iii,v Exhibition still from A World of Water (2025) presented at the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Exhibition supported by British Council and AHRC Impact Acceleration Account administered by UEA. Photo by Kate Wolstenholme.
fig.ii,viii,x,xv Exhibition still from Darwin in Paradise Camp (2025) by Yuki Kihara curated by Tania Moore presented at the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Exhibition supported by British Council and AHRC Impact Acceleration Account administered by UEA. Photo by Kate Wolstenholme. Courtesy of Yuki Kihara, Sainsbury Centre and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand.
fig.iv Julian Charrière, Midnight Zone, 2024. Copyright the artist, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany.
fig.v Hendrick van Anthonissen, View of Scheveningen Sands. Oil on panel, circa 1641. Photo copyright: The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.
fig.vi Olafur Eliasson, Shore compass (2:00, blue), 2018. Copyright: Olafur Eliasson, courtesy of i8 Gallery.
fig.ix Yuki Kihara, Two Fa'afafine on the Beach (after Gauguin), 2020, c-print. Copyright: Courtesy of Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand.
fig.xii Darwin Drag, 2025, Yuki Kihara. Courtesy of Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand.
fig.xiii ‘Darwin Drag (2025) single channel video by Yuki Kihara. Courtesy of Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand. Supported by the Sainsbury Centre, Creative New Zealand, British Council and the Whitworth, University of Manchester.
fig.xiii Jacob van Ruisdael, Panoramic view on the Amstel looking towards Amsterdam. Oil on canvas, height 52.1 cm, width 66.1 cm. Photo copyright: The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.
fig.xiv Maggi Hambling, Wall of water, erosion, 2023, oil on canvas. Copyright: Maggi Hambling.
fig.xvi Yuki Kihara, Two Fa’afafine (after Gauguin), 2020, c-print. Copyright: Courtesy of Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand.

publication date
02 April 2025

tags
Hendrick van Anthonissen, Between, Can the Seas Survive Us?, Julian Charrière, Climate change, Charles Darwin, Ecosystem, Olafur Eliasson, Fitzwilliam Museum, Paul Gauguin, Gender, Island, Yuki Kihara, Kiribati, LGBTQI, Boris Maas, Maldives, Marquesas Islands, Nyima Murry, Netherlands, Norfolk, Norwich School, Ocean, John Kenneth ParanadaQueer, Sainsbury Centre, Samoa, Sea, Tahiti, Va, Water, Whale