Nadia Huggins Offshore Imaginations

from Esferas 14: Cross / Currents ~ Contra / Corrientes

Biographies

Offshore Imaginations, a selection of photographs by artist Nadia Huggins for Esferas, invites the viewer to imagine forms of vision, experience and corporeal thought through three different series: Transformations, Circa no Future, and Disappearing People. Nadia Huggins documents her personal experience by “developing a map of what it means to be human in certain parts of the world.” What possibilities of being, and being in space become available when we situate our bodies in the water? What challenges become visible? What forms of understanding of ourselves and others appear?

Circa No Future

Believing there to be a link between an under-explored aspect of Caribbean adolescent masculinity and the freedom of bodies in the ocean, I set out to document boys’ interaction with the sea. Created since 2014, these photographs capture manhood, snippets of vulnerability and moments of abstraction that often go unrecognized in the day-to-day. The ocean itself takes on a personality—that of the embracing mother providing a safe space for being—which is both archetypal and poignant. The boys climb a large rock, proving their manhood through endurance, fearlessly jump, and become submerged in a moment of innocent unawareness. They emerge having proven themselves. The relationship between the boys and me is also explored within this paradigm. They are aware of me while posturing, but lose self-awareness when they sink into the water.

Transformations is a series of diptychs that explores the relationship between my identity and the marine ecosystem.

During my daily swim, I became preoccupied with the changes I saw happening before me with the deterioration of coral reefs that were once alive. At the same time, I was finding solace through the amorphous quality and weightlessness of my body in the water. I decided to take my camera into the water to document the interplay between the seascape and my body.

I created these transfigured portraits by using collage techniques to bring together selfportraiture and my documentation of marine organisms. Each portrait brings together two separate entities: the body and various marine animals. By juxtaposing these images with a space in between them, each portrait is on the cusp of becoming a single image. This space represents a transient moment where I am regaining buoyancy and separating from the underwater environment to resurface. My intention with these photographs is to create a lasting breath that defies human limitation. The transformation exists within the space in between photographs. It is in this moment that the viewer makes the decision if both worlds are able to separate or merge.

Dissappearing People