ANNE MARIE BASQUIN

UNTITLED

This photograph was taken opposite the island at Te Kohuroa Matheson Bay, currently the site of community-led conservation run by the Te Kohuroa Rewilding Initiative, working towards kelp reforestation by removing an overabundance of kina.

Working within their female-led team, I can’t help but draw parallels between conservation and caretaking. Much of our labour, underwater or behind the scenes, is invisible, just as a clean home obscures the hours of work that go into keeping it that way.

Arrowing down towards the seafloor to gather an armload of kina, I wonder how this work will be quantified at the surface. This photograph peers through the ocean’s mirrored edge, to frame this ever-changing space at the intersection of observation and ecological dynamism, of women’s work and the caretaking of our ecosystems.

This photograph aims to make our labours of caretaking visible.

ARTIST FOLIO AND BIO

ABOUT ANNE MARIE

I’m a writer, photographer, and artist based in Leigh near Te Hāwere-a-Maki in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I grew up in the Midwest and Great Lakes region of the US and Otepoti Dunedin in the South Island. I moved to the Hauraki Gulf in 2021. I have a BFA in Printmaking from the Dunedin School of Fine Arts and a Master of Creative Writing from Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland.

My work has a strong ecological thread and I am especially inspired by the ocean. The hours I spend underwater inform my thinking and my art practice. I am interested in situating myself within the wider ecological field and making a record of change in our era.

Lately, I’ve been playing with 35mm film again (above water) and shooting underwater video footage at Goat Island Marine Reserve. I am also at work on a novel about humpback whales and our changing oceans, and a series of essays on girlhood, migration, miscarriage, and healing trauma with saltwater.