The sea in danger. When the artists launch the alert

France has the second world maritime space (10,186,624 km2). The immense mass of salt water which covers 71 % of our terrestrial globe is named according to its size and its geographic location “sea”, or “ocean”. Oxygen production, carbon absorption, attenuation of global warming, the ocean is not only at the origin of life, but it allows man to live in the planet. Strangely, it is one of the least well known environments, much less for example than space. The year 2025 should contribute to a better knowledge of the seas and the oceans, thanks to the initiative “The common sea – year of the sea” organized under the aegis of the ministry of ecological transition, biodiversity, forest, sea and fishing, which offers many events across France. Among these, the Centquatre, in Paris, designed last winter with the Tara Ocean Foundation an exhibition whose objective was to offer lighting on the ocean and its challenges through the achievements of “embedded” artists in residence on board the Tara boat since 2005. The Tara Ocean Foundation created by Agnès B., Stylist and collector, understood twenty years that artists could have of the general public’s awareness of the dangers with which the oceans face. During these residences, artists observe the work of scientists on board, document it and imagine works from the marine environment. 2025 is also the year of the 3rd international United Nations International Conference on the Ocean (UNOC 3) which is held in Nice from June 9 to 13 whose issue is the adoption of the Nice agreements after those of Paris on the environment in 2015. If since the 1970s and the advent of environmental movements, artists have been interested in earth, nature and their future, what about their interest in the sea? Contemporary artists are precisely committed. They record the state of the world, alert to the urgency to protect marine spaces and draw attention to the link between the preservation of the oceans and the future of humanity.

Explore the seabed

Among the pioneers, there is the biologist and filmmaker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) who produced and produced between 1927 and 1982 more than 20 documentary short films on marine fauna The octopus (1928), Sea urchins (1929), Crabs and shrimp (1931), The hippocampus (1931-1934). As Pia Viewing specifies, Commissioner of exhibition at the Palume Game, “his films awaken our curiosity, develop our imagination, put us in the presence of strangeness and reveal many details unknown to the world”. Nicolas Floc’h (born in 1970), photographer, artist, diver and sailor, has given himself a mission: since 2010, he has explored the seabed which he reports on the State thanks to regular photographic campaigns which he leads in France and abroad. In 2026, he will have mapped the entire French coast by his images. His work on the color of water done in collaboration with scientists informs about its composition and changes. Every two years, Nicolas Floc’h participates in a scientific mission which allows him to continue his work in sometimes remote places. One of his first residences was that carried out for the Tara Pacific mission in 2017 [lire p.38]. Among the artists whose practice is halfway between art and science, we can also quote Julian Charrière (born in 1987). The Franco-Swiss artist is currently working on life that lies in the Midnight Zone (Bathypelagic zone between 1,000 and 4,000 meters deep) and on coral reefs which we know that global warming threatens survival. His works take the form of films, installations, often immersive sculptures.

An overexploited, polluted sea

If the areas explored in depth are still little known, the pelagic area, however, is increasingly overexploited despite the alerts of NGOs and IPCC. It is a double constraint for the sea and the ocean which undergo not only the impoverishment of their environment but also their deterioration due to the many marine pollution. Elsa Guillaume (born in 1989), artist and diver, sensitive to the sea and his future, also embarked on the Tara schooner who led her in 2016 from Easter Island to Papeete. Among his recent achievements, we could see at the Centquatre this winter the installation Fine & Slices (2016-2022) made up of hybrid ceramics: palms-have, backpack bags, fish-playing glasses. These poetic accessories are also the remains of a fishing: ailerons and fragmented flesh are cut with great precision and conceal the violence and the disasters of industrial fishing. 1951, the author Rachel Carson in her work The sea around us Described the sea “as a“ natural ”trash can for all toxic waste and“ low -activity waste ”in the atomic era”. To raise awareness of marine pollution, photographer Manon Lanjouère (born in 1993) transformed a selection of waste poured into the oceans (cotton spots, yogurt pots, ball pens) into biolumine creatures. This waste, once in the state of plastic microparticles, become the invisible enemy of the seabed killing the plankton, first link in the food chain.

Make with the sea: eco-design

Rather than exhausting natural resources, how to continue to create and produce while being respectful of our environment? It is the bias of the designer, Violaine Bruet, founder of the Algae Manufacture, who installed her studio in Auray, in Morbihan, where she works from algae, laminaries, algae forming long ribbons that are woven, embossed, braided or embroidered to become textile pieces that sometimes have the appearance of leather. “These living organizations have been there for a billion years and we are only at the start of research on their uses. Already present in agriculture, food, cosmetology, algae is gradually finding their place in architecture and design. Young designer Samuel Tomatis (born in 1992) has already developed promising research on the potential uses of algae. Papers and packaging, food containers, building materials, furniture, so many tracks tested from Brittany to Guadeloupe where invasive algae proliferate on a large part of the coast. In overseas, he worked on the revaluation of sargassum, a kind of brown algae dangerous for biodiversity and health. He is notably the author of the chair Alga (2016) which is now part of the Pompidou Center collections. The industrial revolution and the development of tourism in the 19th century finally led to the progressive exploitation of resources and the surroundings of the seas and the oceans. Mass tourism has led not only to invest the ribs with real estate projects artificializing the soils, but also to sometimes pollute the oceans irreversibly. Micro-platics are one of the most eloquent examples. Faced with this ecological and climatic emergency, the artists are mobilizing through works that try to make people aware of the danger and future disasters if no decision is made in a collegial manner. This is the whole issue of the 3rd international conference on the oceans organized by the United Nations. We bet that it offers the opportunity to take measures which, by protecting the oceans, also protect us permanently.