New Virtual Exhibition: “Wetland Times”

We are excited to announce the publication of the new virtual exhibition “Wetland Times” by Enaiê Mairê Azambuja, Blake Ewing, and Nicola Thomas. The exhibition explores the dynamic temporalities of wetlands and their complex relationships—the temporal imaginaries, narratives, structures, flows, (a)synchronicities, and ruptures they contain—framed by a conceptual vocabulary that reveals the role of language in understanding wetland times and temporalities.

About the Exhibition

The “Wetland Times” exhibition is the product of a three-year British Academy–funded research project which has brought together humanities scholars and social scientists to develop new methods and approaches to understanding the complexity of time in wetland spaces. The authors begin from the premise that broad concepts like the Anthropocene, deep time, and planetary thinking threaten to overshadow and even invalidate the varied, localized, and culturally specific temporal experiences essential to human/nonhuman relationships. The material in the virtual exhibition shows how some of these large-scale concepts and narratives relate to overlapping, messy, and ever-changing “local” times.

All of the multimedia presented in this virtual exhibition was collected by Enaiê Mairê Azambuja and Blake Ewing during the course of their research activity across the three case study sites: Morecambe Bay, the Wadden Sea, and the Dja-Et-Lobo region in Southern Cameroon. Enaiê Mairê Azambuja conducted interviews with people connected with Morecambe Bay and the Wadden Sea, focusing in particular on areas of the Danish Wadden, as well as gathering their stories and ideas through shared walks and dialogue, and the exchange of multimedia material including artworks, photographs, video, and audio. Similarly, Blake Ewing and Nsah Mala engaged in exchange and dialogue with people living around the margins of the Dja Faunal Reserve—Baka and Bantu people, researchers, conservationists, and NGOs—as well as accompanying them on forest walks and listening to oral stories told by these communities. Nsah Mala ran the “futures triangle” workshops with local communities in these areas which are discussed in the chapter “Ruptures.”

The exhibition has been curated by Enaiê Mairê Azambuja with text and editorial suggestions contributed by Blake Ewing and Nicola Thomas.

Citation

Azambuja, Enaiê Mairê, Blake Ewing, and Nicola Thomas. “Wetland Times.” Environment & Society Portal, Virtual Exhibitions 2025, no. 2. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. https://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/wetland-times.