Did you know… the sea is a storyteller?
Its language is not written in ink, but in shells, salt, sand and silence, fragments of memory delivered with each changing tide. For Bahamian artist Edrin Chris Symonette, the sea speaks not only of nature, but of us: of identity, memory, history and transformation. His powerful series Salt & Skin gives quiet form to this exchange between land and sea, offering sculptural works that feel both grounded and ephemeral.
At first glance, the pieces resemble serene face casts, calm, contemplative, timeless. But embedded within them are raw materials gathered directly from the Bahamian shoreline: coral fragments, pigments, sediment and shells. These elements are not simply decorative, they are integral to the narrative. They are, quite literally, pieces of the land, worn down into memory.
Art Made of Earth, Shaped by Water
By working with shoreline matter, Symonette does more than evoke the Caribbean’s natural beauty. He explores erosion as a kind of storytelling. The ocean reshapes everything it touches, just as time and experience reshape who we are. Each cast becomes a meditation: What does the sea leave behind? What gets buried beneath the surface? How do time, memory and place shape us?
The faces, eyes closed and mouths silent, might belong to anyone, or everyone. They reflect a shared stillness, but no two are alike. Some hold the soft blush of iron-rich clay, others sparkle faintly with tiny bits of shell. The juxtaposition of smooth plaster with coarse natural textures creates tension between fragility and resilience, between presence and absence.
Shifting Shorelines, Shifting Selves
In the Caribbean, the shoreline is not merely scenic. It is deeply symbolic. Islanders live in constant relationship with the edge: between land and water, history and future, rootedness and movement. Salt & Skin captures that tension. The works remind us that identity, like coastline, is never fixed. It is shaped by storms, sculpted by stillness, and reformed again and again.
Symonette’s practice also gestures towards ecological urgency. As rising seas threaten the very land these materials come from, the series echoes questions around climate, loss and preservation. What happens when the landscape itself begins to disappear? When memory is washed away?
The Caribbean as Archive
Symonette is part of a growing wave of Caribbean artists who treat the environment not just as a backdrop, but as archive, collaborator and witness. Through material and metaphor, Salt & Skin invites us to consider the shoreline as a place of both erosion and remembering, a threshold where history and possibility meet.
This series is deeply Caribbean. It speaks in textures and silences, in materials shaped by nature and time. It reminds us that to belong to the sea is to be shaped by it, not just physically, but spiritually, culturally and creatively.
Artist: Edrin Chris Symonette
Series: Salt & Skin
Location: The Bahamas
Instagram: @artislife86
