Painting-with the Sea, Feeling-with Sea Animals: Astrid Nobel and the Aesthetics of the Ancestral

Set against the backdrop of ecological disruption and multispecies entanglements, the event opened a space for thinking with and through water, nonhuman animals, and art. The program brought together interdisciplinary perspectives on oceanic and aquatic worlds, the politics and ethics of nonhuman life, and the role of artistic practices in navigating fluid ecologies and relational thinking. Verbesselt’s contribution explored Astrid Nobel’s work as a way of engaging deeply with sea environments and marine life, using materials drawn from the ocean to create paintings that evoke an aesthetics of the ancestral.