Semiquincentennial Exhibition: Contemporary Artists Respond at the Hunterdon Art Museum

Listen to nine immigration stories from along the Musconetcong River:

This installation explored diversity and the movement of people who call a small area along the Musconetcong River home. Where did my neighbors or their ancestors come from originally? What decisions brought them to this country? And what of those who are not or did not descend from immigrants but whose people have always been here or were brought here by force? Some of these stories were told by women in my community in the sound installation. Other voices are silent or silenced. The river flows through the land and through all of our lives here and I felt it was important to invite more than human voices into this conversation. Their stories have been imagined through asemic writing on cyanotype images inspired by water’s language of sound and movement, and on ceramic tablets formed of local clay referencing the stories written by seaweed at low tide. Two hundred and thirty-one pinch pots were part of the installation representing the estimated number of ethnicities in New Jersey. As a reminder of the interconnectedness of all bodies of water and of all who inhabit watery bodies, they were filled with water from the South Branch of the Raritan River next to the Museum.