The first exhibition in the Institute of Contemporary Art East Boston satellite space opening in summer 2018 will be light and video projections of dolphins by Los Angeles artist and animal rights activist Diana Thater, the Boston museum announced.
The satellite space, dubbed the “Watershed,” will be situated across Boston Harbor from the ICA in the East Boston Shipyard and Marina. The museum plans to provide a boat to shuttle visitors between the locations.
“Thater’s installation will reflect on the fragility of the natural world, transforming the Watershed through light and moving image projections,” the museum announced. “The installation will center on Thater’s artwork ‘Delphine,’ reconfigured in response to the Watershed’s raw, industrial space, and coastal location. In this monumental work, underwater film and video footage of swimming dolphins spills across the floor, ceiling, and walls, creating an immersive underwater environment. As viewers interact with ‘Delphine,’ they become performers within the artwork, their own silhouettes moving and spinning alongside the dolphins. Grounding the sea of projections is a composite video wall, a grid of nine cube monitors displaying a single glowing image of the sun. In addition to ‘Delphine,’ the Watershed will feature a new sculptural video installation, ‘A Runaway World,’ produced in Kenya in 2016 and 2017. The work is staged within a unique architectural environment of free-standing screen structures designed by Thater. ‘A Runaway World’ focuses on the lives and worlds of species on the verge of extinction and the illicit economies that threaten their survival.”