California Is the Eastern Pacific: Toward a Collective Oceanic Realignment

This article is a reprint of a curatorial essay written for the catalogue of Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean, a multi-venue exhibition presented as part of Art & Science Collide, Getty’s most recent PST ART initiative (2024–25). Transformative Currents featured work by twenty-one artists and collaborative teams from across the Pacific region at three venues in Southern California: Oceanside Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art (now UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art), and Crystal Cove Conservancy. The essay details how the show, while rooted in Southern California, attempted to suture the ways in which the Pacific has been divided by colonial and imperialist powers and, thus, is regularly presented in large-scale exhibitions. It argues that the work in Transformative Currents both disembarked from Southern California and seemingly always recalled it, the artists navigating the Pacific searching for points of solidarity, not places for subjugation.