Young bay mud—a scientific term for ecologically rich and water-saturated deposits that are less than ten thousand years old—underlies much of the San Francisco Bay Area. A ground that uniquely encourages biodiversity but resists human development, young bay mud shapes human experience of and interaction with the region and offers a potent vantage point to consider artistic explorations of ecological entanglement and belonging in the Bay Area. 

Young Bay Mud highlights artists who are using mud as both a material and a conceptual framework to consider the relationship between humans and our local environment. The artists included—Ashwini Bhat, Mercedes Dorame, Futurefarmers, Tanja Geis, and Joanna Keane Lopez— have lived in Northern California, and each build upon local histories and ecologies in their work. With the understanding that issues faced by the region—whether climate change or the housing crisis—are human-made and interconnected, the artists invoke indigenous, ancestral, sensorial, and multispecies knowledge to propose alternative ways of relating to our immediate environment.  

Support

Young Bay Mud is made possible by the SJMA Exhibitions Fund.

Operations and programs at the San José Museum of Art are made possible by principal support from SJMA’s Board of Trustees, a Cultural Affairs Grant from the City of San José, and the Lipman Family Foundation; by lead support from the Adobe Foundation, the California Arts Council, Toby and Barry Fernald, Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, Tammy and Tom Kiely, the Knight Foundation, Evelyn and Rick Neely, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Skyline Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the SJMA Director's Council and Council of 100; and with significant endowment support from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the San José Museum of Art Endowment Fund established by the Knight Foundation at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.