Between Continents, Across the Seas
Susanne Kessler
GALLERY II
Susanne Kessler, Mappa Mundi, 2018, gauze cloth, sewing thread, iron rods, iron mesh, wire, 78.7 × 39.4 inches.
August 8 - 30, 2026
Opening reception: Saturday, August 8 from 6-8pm
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Between Continents, Across the Seas, an exhibition by Susanne Kessler that investigates the act of mapping the seas. Kessler explores strategies of both formal and informal cartography, transforming them into a sensuous experience in which knowledge, imagination, and discovery become inseparable.
The exhibition is anchored by Mappa Mundi, an embroidered world map created in 2018 that marks the beginning of Kessler’s long engagement with the oceans. Initially resembling a fleet of sails, the embroidered forms of continents dissolve into an abstract composition of signs and color, suggesting that every map constitutes both a geographical representation and a projection of human imagination. Rather than depicting the sea as a static surface, Kessler explores it as a living, dynamic field of movement, currents, and invisible destructive forces upon which geography, history, memory, and human destiny converge.
Guided by her oceanic research, Kessler shapes and transforms seascapes while preserving their flow, movement, and restlessness. A series of embroidered maritime cartographies—one component of her large-scale project Mapping the Sea (2021-22)—document different routes and diagrammatic schemes. Kessler has installed these embroideries so that each side of the textile is visible, offering two simultaneous versions of these maps. In doing so, she highlights not only the arbitrariness of data visualization but also the double-edged nature of the sea itself—with its ceaseless motion comes turbulence and disorientation. Kessler thus gathers the materials, histories and geographical questions associated with the sea and brings them into an active process of investigation and transformation. In doing so, she asks what we might jettison and what we might keep from the systems which have historically guided our navigation.
The latest component of Kessler’s project comprises a series of sculptures and unique digital prints inspired by the so-called stick charts from the Marshall Islands. For centuries, these navigational charts were used by a small number of highly skilled navigators in Micronesia. Rather than functioning as maps in the Euroamerican tradition, they served as mnemonic devices used before a voyage, enabling sailors to visualize wave patterns around the atolls, prevailing winds, ocean swells, and currents. Their knowledge was based not on fixed routes but on a profound understanding of the dynamic movements of the sea.
As sea levels continue to rise, many of the low-lying islands of Micronesia are threatened with disappearance. The traditional stick charts, together with the centuries-old knowledge of predictable winds, currents and wave systems that they embodied, are gradually losing their practical function as the oceans themselves undergo fundamental transformation.
By bringing together indigenous navigation, historical scientific records and contemporary artistic imagination, Kessler creates works that bridge different systems of knowledge. The sea has always been both a cultural archive and a living organism—one whose rhythms, movements and transformations shape not only our understanding of the world, but also our responsibility towards its future.
Susanne Kessler is an award-winning artist whose practice spans installation, sculpture, drawing, embroidery, and cartography. Living and working transnationally, primarily between Berlin, Rome, and London, her work explores the interconnectedness of cultures, landscapes, and human experience. Kessler has exhibited internationally throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Her large-scale installations and research-based projects transform geographical, historical, and scientific knowledge into poetic visual experiences.
View the Press Release here.