Artist Shezad Dawood is joined by researcher Alice Xia Zhu for a conversation that addresses the fate of microplastics in marine and freshwater contexts, from the San Francisco Bay to the Arctic. This programme is organised in dialogue with Shezad Dawood’s exhibition Leviathan, presented on MOCA’s Floor 4. Leviathan is an ambitious “episodic monster” consisting of ten filmic episodes that envisage a future, uncannily much like our present, to consider possible links between borders, mental health, and marine welfare.

Shezad Dawood is an interdisciplinary artist, who uses research and collaboration as a way of informing his work in film, installation, writing, publishing, VR and sculpture. His key concerns are marine ecology, non-aligned movement and the ethics of place. Dawood’s work has been exhibited and won awards at multiple biennales and film festivals, and features in the permanent collections of LACMA, TATE, and the British Museum, among others.

Alice Xia Zhu is a Master’s student working under Chelsea Rochman in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. She studies the sources and fate of microplastics in San Francisco Bay. Alice hopes her research can inform policy to mitigate plastic pollution entering The Bay. Alice is also a part of the U of T Trash Team, a team of graduate and undergraduate students who strive to connect people and increase literacy concerning material consumption and waste with creative and practical actions.

Public programmes for Leviathan are supported by Brenda Simpson. 

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Image Credit: Location in the Arctic, Clara Thaysen, 2017.