This exhibition by Diyan Achjadi explores the ways that visual storytelling can be used to document the impact of human activity on the ecosystem across multiple locations.

Carried Through the Water will feature Diyan’s beautiful stop motion watercolour animation Hush, alongside new and recent works on paper. Her work explores the impact of human activity on the ecosystem, including shifting of shorelines due to climate change and land reclamation. Through visual storytelling, Diyan’s work also considers how activities in one location might impact multiple other locations. An ash-cloud from volcanic activity on one island might change the colour of the sky thousands of miles away. The movement of people, objects, stories, and memories, can have profound effects that reach across oceans. 

Diyan Achjadi is a Vancouver-based artist who explores the ways that surface ornamentation and illustrated printed matter can document the circulation of ideas and stories in visual form. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, her formative years were spent moving between multiple educational, political, and cultural systems.

Carried Through the Water is the first exhibition in which Nanaimo Art Gallery asks the question: What stories do we tell?