Strand Gallery

April 12 - July 6, 2025

ArtWalk Opening Reception
Saturday, April 12, 2025
6 – 9 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM

Related Programs:
More information coming soon…

NOAA and the Department of the Interior are leading efforts for the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Open Ocean Trustees to restore deep-sea communities in the Gulf injured by the 2010 DWH oil spill.

This exhibition is made possible by a grant from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation with funding from the NOAA Restoration Center.

Click here to learn more about the restoration and access free educational resources.

Image:
Brandon Ballengée
Collapse, 2010/12
Greater than 26,126 preserved Gulf of Mexico specimens following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, glass, preservative solutions
144” x 180” x 180”
Created in scientific collaboration with Todd Gardner, Jack Rudloe, and Peter Warny
Courtesy the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles// Dallas// Seoul 

GAC’s exhibitions are supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Brandon Ballengée
The Sea of Lost Children

Brandon Ballengée’s exhibition, The Sea of Lost Children, is presented in observation of the 15th commemoration of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. The exhibition features Ballengée’s monumental sculptural installation, Collapse, made in response to the threat and potential unraveling of the Gulf’s food chain following the DWH oil spill and ongoing restoration of the injured habitats. The piece includes 26,162 preserved specimens arranged into a pyramid, representing 370 species of fish and other aquatic organisms collected from the Gulf Coast. Specimens are arranged according to the place they occupy in the food chain, with empty specimen jars representing species in decline or those that have already been lost to extinction. The installation also includes work from the series La Mer des Enfants Perdus (The Sea of Lost Children) composed as flags depicting X-rays of missing Gulf Species flanking the gallery in a tribute to these ghosts of the Gulf.

Brandon Ballengée is a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator based in Arnaudville, LA. Ballengée creates multi-media artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research. Ballengée’s art has been exhibited internationally in over 20 countries and in the summer of 2013 the first career survey of his work debuted at the Château de Charamarande (Essonne, France), which travelled to the Museum Het Domein (Sittard, Netherlands) in 2014. In 2016 a 20-year retrospective of his work was held at University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie, WY. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2017), Awards from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (2015, 2016), Creative Capital Award (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021) and was included in the 2020 Grist 50 Emerging Environmental Leaders. In 2016, Ballengée in partnership with his wife sustainable food educator Aurore Ballengée began the Atelier de la Nature an eco-educational campus and nature reserve in Arnaudville, LA. He is represented by Various Small Fires, Los Angeles// Dallas// Seoul.

brandonballengee.com