Fish Farm Artist Statement:

“We don’t exist here without our fish” – Ernest Alfred, a hereditary chief of the Namgis nation and fish farm protestor. This is a truth for many communities up and down the Pacific coast. As it is true for resident orcas, bears, wolves, eagles, songbirds and even the riverside cedar forests, which salmon carcasses fertilize.

If our ecosystems and our communities rely on salmon, then wild salmon horrors are our horrors too. The sea lice and diseases propagated in open net fish pens flow into the Salish sea infecting wild salmon population. In the pens, infection contorts the skeletons of Atlantic salmon turning them into haunting, gasping creatures covered in open wounds. They are the horrifying embodiment of unchecked human greed.

Bio:

The salmon Room was created through a collaboration of students from Esquimalt high school, Settler allies of the indigenous led fish farm protests and members of the University of Victoria teacher education program.