Sea Garden explores the contradictory yet structural coexistence and alternation between conditions of dryness and wetness: too much water, threatening inundation, or too little water, auguring unforgiving heat. The exhibition combines existing and new works that highlight that transient point at which land meets sea. The idea and the image of a sea garden invite us to imagine the edge as a setting, a symbol, and a system, to think through thresholds and borders – of environments, labour, gender, and migratory movements.

Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), whose work is also part of the EMST collection, imprints traces of her own body onto the landscape only to directly erase them through the four natural elements.

Image: Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Volcano Series No. 2), 1979, “Sea Garden” at EMST, Athens, 2025