‘Tebiyauup ja’l kuyak?’ is a large-scale sculpture (20m X 1.5m X 0.02m) created specifically for The Clemente’s balustrade. It re-imagines the Sargassum invasions that have become commonplace in the Caribbean for the past decade. In this case, the Sargassum is transformed beyond recognition into a plastic-like substance and invading an urban setting in a city where this algae bloom is known only through news sources.

The piece is named after the name for this alga in Kiliwa, an endangered language spoken in Baja California from the Yuman linguistic family. Choosing Kiliwa as it’s one of the few languages whose word for this alga is not an adaptation of Sargassum, a name given by Portuguese sailors during the colonization of the American continent, after a plant that grew in their water wells in Portugal.