Brackish Bodies

Fascinated by bogs and wetland environments, Maria Simmons explores concepts of contamination, fermentation, and preservation through works that intertwine science, folklore, and mythology. The exhibition Brackish Bodies was presented as part of Manifestation JE/US 2025.

The work grew out of a spring 2024 residency at Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, where she walked the shoreline and followed the rhythms of the tides. In the studio, she created ceramic vessels whose organic shapes fuse elements from the river’s salty waters with organisms native to peatlands. Made of ceramic, reed, kelp, tannic water, salt water and freshwater, the sinuous installation evokes the motion of the tides and the shifts in salinity caused by evaporation and condensation, when seawater rises, falls as rain and nourishes wetland ecosystems. A spider moves stealthily among liquid-filled carnivorous plants. The tannic and saline waters at the heart of the installation are essential to countless non-human life forms. Viscous glazes, reminiscent of seaweed, are speckled with greenish glimmers inspired by will-o’-the-wisps, those erratic lights often seen hovering over marshy ground.

Beneath the surface, peatlands conceal closely guarded secrets. They are the planet’s largest terrestrial carbon stores and play a vital role in regulating climate change. Their unique conditions, in particular their acidic water and lack of oxygen, naturally preserve the organic matter buried within them. Peat has even yielded human artifacts, such as the enigmatic “bog butter,” evidence of ancient food preservation practices. Like a portal, Brackish Bodies opens a liminal space where past and present, surface and underworld, living and non-living converge, offering possible reconnections with our environment and the timeless natural phenomena that shape it.

Curator: Maude Johnson
September 13 to November 22, 2025

Exhibition documentation coming soon.