Ephemeral Coast

Ephemeral Coast is my research and curatorial platform, bringing together my work on contemporary art, ecology, environmental justice, and social change. I am interested in how artists and curators address the intertwined conditions of climate change, pollution, extraction, and environmental degradation, and how art can make these conditions visible, felt, and open to critical reflection.

From 2014 to 2019, my SSHRC-funded project Ephemeral Coast explored coastal climate change through exhibitions and research connecting international coastal regions. Bringing art into dialogue with the environmental humanities and earth sciences, the project considered coastlines as dynamic, inhabited, and precarious spaces shaped by environmental change, cultural memory, and uneven forms of vulnerability and resilience.

My current research examines how modern and contemporary art visualizes oceanic climate change and environmental crisis. Drawing on art history, curatorial studies, and the environmental humanities, I investigate photography, moving image, installation, and other visual practices as forms of storytelling and intervention, practices that render oceanic pollution, degradation, sea-level rise, and their social consequences perceptible.

Forthcoming:

Arts and Oceanic Climate Change: Entangled Currents
Routledge, March 2027

About Celina

I am an art historian, curator, and editor, and Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Ottawa. Born in Wales, I now live and work in Ottawa, on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. My teaching, research, writing, and curatorial work explore contemporary art’s engagement with ecology, environmental justice, and social change.

My research brings art history and curatorial studies into conversation with the environmental humanities. Through SSHRC-funded projects including Ephemeral Coast: Curating Environmental Change (2015–19) and Curating Ecological Futures (2022–25), I have examined the visual, cultural, and ecological dimensions of climate change, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, pollution, and environmental justice. I work collaboratively across disciplines and regions, bringing artists, scientists, activists, and communities into dialogue around changing coastal and oceanic environments.

I am co-founder and editor of Drain Magazine: A Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture. My books include Ephemeral Coast: Visualizing Coastal Climate Change (2022) and Ephemeral Coast S. Wales (2014). I also edited The Artist as Curator (2015) and co-edited Global and Local Art Histories (2007). Across these publications, edited collections, exhibition catalogues, and critical essays, I consider how artistic practices shape our understanding of environmental crises and transition.

Celina Jeffery