To drift is to surrender to a movement whose direction cannot always be known. It suggests a state of suspension, of being carried by currents that may lead somewhere unexpected, or nowhere at all. Beneath the seemingly endless surface of the sea, invisible processes unfold: organisms flourish and disappear, sediments accumulate, and traces of human activity travel through water, often far beyond their point of origin. There is both beauty and unease in this constant movement, a sense of life unfolding alongside the possibility of its disappearance. Bringing together Estonian artist Kristina Õllek and French artist Anne-Laure Wuillai, Drifting Through Waters explores this fragile and shifting territory between what we can observe and what remains hidden, between the sea as a source of life and as a witness to profound environmental change.

For Kristina Õllek, the sea is a living environment in which geological histories, microscopic organisms, and human interventions are inseparably intertwined. Her long-term engagement with the Baltic Sea has led her to investigate oxygen-depleted waters, cyanobacterial blooms, and the fragile conditions of marine life. Moving between photography, installation, and microbial and chemical processes, Õllek allows the materials themselves to participate in the making of an image. In works such as Aerial view. Sedimenting Sediments (2024) and Cyanobacterial Bloom Index (2024), photographic surfaces are transformed through the growth of sea salt crystals, combined with cyanobacteria and fluorescent pigments. These materials evoke the processes of accumulation and transformation taking place within the Baltic Sea, where nutrient pollution and rising temperatures contribute to the proliferation of cyanobacteria and the formation of oxygen-depleted zones. While Õllek allows marine materials to transform the image itself, the resulting works become more than representations of the underwater world: they carry within them traces of the very processes they seek to reveal. These investigations continue through three new works shaped by dialogues with researchers at GEOMAR in Kiel, extending Õllek’s exploration of the changing conditions of aquatic ecosystems. Comprising Drifting Through Benthic (2026), Drifting Through Samples of Waters (2026), and Breathing Sulfur (2026), the pieces fuse photography, clay and encrustations of sea salt. They possess a strange, otherworldly beauty, evoking landscapes that seem to belong simultaneously to a distant past and an uncertain future. They are bound together by a distinct yellow that carries a dual resonance: the shifting presence of sulfur-breathing Beggiatoa bacteria weaving across hypoxic sea floors, and the bright, industrial hue of underwater research equipment seeking answers in the dark. Through this tactile interplay of materials, the shifts within these works emerge as something deeply unsettling, yet unexpectedly alluring.