Which Way Does The Water Flow? was commissioned for Tuning In To Climate Change, a queer, community exploration of how climate change shapes our inner worlds. This project was led by Hannah Bayne, PhD Candidate and researcher in the Climate Change & Global Health group at the University of Alberta. Through a queer, eco-somatic lens, the artist considers the dualistic nature of eco-grief, and explores what it means to “hold both” —remembering that there are two sides, and that we can only grieve that which we have loved deeply.

Through the cyanotype process, these works become an Earth Altar—a practice of giving reverence to the land by collecting and placing materials from the shoreline onto the cloth. The fabric is then exposed under the sun, layered with sand, water, seaweed, shells, rocks, and the delicate traces of crabs and other creatures who briefly crossed its surface. These impressions hold the memory of ephemeral moments—captured yet still fluid, marked in deep blue.

Further reflecting upon the ways in which love and grief take the shape of water, these works were created in direct communion with nature along two distinct shorelines. The first was formed by the river valley along the North Saskatchewan River in the Beaver Hills region of amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton).  The second was shaped by the Pacific Ocean on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. Both places hold significant meaning for the artist’s personal journey through loss, love, and remembrance.

As such, these cyanotypes remind us that our emotional and ecological realities are intertwined. By imagining both grief and love as an ocean and a river, the two pieces offer an invitation to audiences: to consider how we choose to navigate these waters, and to ask, how do we allow them to shape us without being swept away? Ultimately, Which Way Does The Water Flow? is an invitation into relationship—with the land, the waters that hold our stories, and the emotional tides that rise and fall within the heart. It is a practice of honoring what pours through us, and remembering that we have agency in how we meet these waters.