Coral Reef in the Maldives

Guillame Collanges / Argos Collective, French

Coral Reef in the Maldives, 2005

As rising sea levels threaten the habitability of the Maldives, residents are forced to wonder where they will relocate when the sea levels inevitably overtake their homes. Across the globe, climate change has forced many who live in developing areas to seek refuge in other nations. However, these nations are often the largest contributors to the climate change that forces the immigration to begin with and seemingly ignore the connection between their contributions to climate change and the increasing immigration and refugee rates. This image depicts the beautiful coral reefs of the Maldives, but just above the water is home. The position of the house has it appearing to be built directly on top of the reef of the ocean, which, while untrue, highlights the increasingly precarious nature of living in such an environment. One small ripple occurring as this photo was taken would cause the home to appear to disappear under the surface of the water. This image demonstrates the impending overtaking of the water, as well as the human cost of rising sea levels. It is not just an island being overtaken by water, this is a home to many that is being swallowed by the sea as a result of the shoddy environmental decision making on behalf of large nations around the globe. Label by Gwyneth McCrae

Agua #1, near Calexico, California

Richard Misrach, American, born 1949

Agua #1, near Calexico, California, 2004

This photo taken by Misrach shows a lone flag waving in the wind, alerting immigrants to a water station during their treacherous, border-crossing voyage; the water barrel is likely a life-saving source in an otherwise unforgiving and barren desert. This photograph is one of eighty works featured in Border Cantos, a gallery created by photographer Misrach and sculptor/composer Guillermo Galindo that uses sound, sight, and salvaged belongings from immigrants (alive and deceased) to humanize the controversial and challenging issue of immigration. Using a combination of photography, music, and sculpture based on possessions lost and found across the desert, Border Cantos gives us a haunting portrait of struggle, sacrifice, and salvation that captures raw human determination in the face of political and environmental instability. Label by Tara Vasanth

That Sinking Feeling

David Gray, Australian

That Sinking Feeling

This photograph shows a woman standing on a small piece of land in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. She is surrounded by a body of water, with someone snorkeling right underneath her. Many Pacific island nations rest only a few meters above sea level and are at extreme risk of flooding due to climate change. This photograph emphasizes how close seawater is to completely covering these islands, as the woman hardly has any land to rest on. It is predicted that within the next 30-60 years, these islands will become inhabitable due to rising sea levels. Label by Sebastian Rios-Melean

The migration gained in momentum

Jacob Lawrence, American, 1917-2000

The migration gained in momentum, 1941

Lawrence was born in New Jersey and raised in Harlem, experiencing the Harlem Renaissance, but he was the child of two migrant parents who took part in the internal Great Migration following the U.S. Civil War, an experience that Lawrence recaptures through a series of paintings, of which this is the first. While climate disasters are increasingly the impetus for internal displacement in the US, the communities that are most at-risk have remained the same since the Great Migration. They experience these risks now as the result of ongoing discriminatory practices that have been in place since before the Great Migration, and in the communities that received them after the migration. The nearly monochrome environment the migrants travel through in this piece is likely meant to evoke a lack of safety in their original environment, and as climate migration grows more prevalent this gray space only gains more meanings—the ash-coated aftermath of a fire, or the muddy waters of a flood. Label by Frank Kennedy