BECOMING ESTUARINE

Becoming Estuarine (B.E.) is a multi-year, multi-layered artistic and curatorial project that explores the San Francisco Bay Estuary and its complex network of water systems. The project emerges from a desire to understand the Bay not only as a defining geographic feature but as a living system that connects the region.

Rooted in the idea that “the Bay” is both a cultural identifier and a shared ecosystem under pressure, B.E. asks what it means to live in relation to an estuary, an ever-shifting threshold between land and sea. Physical sites and conceptual lines of inquiry are guided by points of confluence where living and built systems meet: lost or restored wetlands, industrial shorelines, and urban canals that reveal layered histories of life, settlement, extraction, resilience, and renewal. Through artistic research, community engagement, and collaboration with scientists, stewards, local historians, and students, the project traces how these places embody the evolving relationship between culture and ecology in the Bay Area.

Culminating in a new artwork commissioned by the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (MarinMOCA), B.E. is co-led by artist Amy Franceschini, Futurefarmers, and curator Devon Bella. The project envisions the estuary as a site of transformation where histories, environmental realities, and imaginaries intersect and are constantly becoming.