"We are the sea, we are the ocean," declared the Fijian thinker Epeli Hauʻofa in the 1970s, seeking to free Pacific islanders from the narrow confines of their isolated islands. Rather than thinking from the land, he urged a shift in perspective, to see from the ocean's vantage point. Suddenly, a vast horizon unfolds and no island remains alone. Instead, they form a continuous network, a sprawling archipelago that stretches far beyond Polynesia itself.
In her practice, Josephine Turalba makes a similar call. The Filipino artist sees the ocean as a powerful connector, linking continents, cultures, and peoples through a constant circulation of flux. Shifting away from human-centered notions of time and space, her recent works embrace an oceanic perspective, making room for marine creatures and fluid, watery ways of being and perceiving the world. For Turalba, it is essential to invent new myths, not in order to escape reality but to better face our troubled times.
Like the sea that constantly churns everything together, the artist continuously mixes techniques, cultural and natural elements, myths and facts, following an original process of assemblage. For more than ten years, she has been creating tapestries made of leather pieces, cartridges, and embroideries, combining traditional know-how with contemporary components. Bullet casings morph into slippers or pets, shoe soles become colorful manta rays or surveillance satellites. Turalba cuts, sews, moves, and recontextualizes the objects and beings that populate our world, highlighting the multiple interconnections that bind us. With her, mermaids drift alongside the pulses of submarine sonars, while octopuses blur into satellites. We move seamlessly from Philippine legends to new technologies, reflecting worlds that both interlock and clash.
