PARADISE ADRIFT

coastal / marine landscapes

Paradise Adrift is an ongoing visual research project exploring how the ocean is imagined and consumed as paradise, while beneath its surface tourism, plastic waste and fragile marine ecosystems become increasingly connected.

The project developed during a 90-day journey between November 2025 and February 2026 through regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, including Zanzibar, the Maldives, Thailand, the Philippines and Palau. Across these coastlines, the ocean appears both beautiful and vulnerable: blue water, open skies and carefully framed images of paradise coexist with drifting plastic, damaged reefs and changing marine environments.

Working with photography, video, painting and installation, Paradise Adrift focuses on slow observation rather than direct explanation. Above water, the ocean appears calm and almost untouched. Below the surface, tourists, marine life, currents and debris move through the same shared space, blurring the line between nature and human presence.

Plastic objects return throughout the work as quiet but persistent elements. Bottles and fragments drift through the images, sometimes resembling marine organisms, revealing how deeply human waste has become part of ocean landscapes.

During the journey, plastic debris collected along shorelines also became material for later studio works, connecting direct encounters at sea with a broader material practice.

Rather than offering fixed conclusions, Paradise Adrift remains open and evolving. Shaped by movement, chance and changing conditions. The project invites viewers to look more closely at what is presented as natural, at what has quietly become normal, and at a paradise slowly drifting beneath the surface.