While wandering along the embankment wall overlooking the wetland area in the city of Adana, I encountered a trio of ducks. At first glance, I did not understand what I had seen since they were camouflaged among the bushes and plants. Then, I realized that one white and two navy/dark blue heads were foraging on the ground. They seemed to be looking for something to eat. Occasionally, they would dip their heads under the shallow water, stretch out their legs, and float briefly, where they encountered several discarded objects like bottles. Then, they moved on to the ground where they could walk again and continued their quest.
The routes ducks draw do not seem to recognize borders between water and land. Their bodily movements or the way they exist in watery areas may differ from those appearing on land. However, in wetlands, when the ducks are in a watery zone, they seem simultaneously to be amongst plants and mud. In other words, how ducks move around reflects a materiality that is not only land or only water: in fact, there is no such demarcation for them. This is different from abstractions of watery spaces via unambiguous contours.
Paintings that literally draw borders of things can be called to deliberate on abstractions of borders. Barbara Buhler Lynes mentions Georgia O’Keeffe as “a painter of recognizable forms,”1 which makes me question which forms we notice when we look at the material world. We are good at noticing river lines, as Dilip da Cunha also examines.2 One aspect of O’Keeffe’s work that impresses me is how she also plays with forms and shapes, highlighting “the subtle forms she saw,” as Lynes points out.3 Instead of focusing on the accuracy of landscapes in the paintings, her works can be pondered in terms of conceiving the surrounding forms in the first place, whether already marked or obscure. Looking into the way she presents the landscapes can be approached as an artistic act that experiments with the favorable and agreeable forms, which invites us to re-imagine the environment intricately.
Following a trio of ducks around a wetland can prompt re-viewing the forms of the wet environment. An image of a body of water with neat lines and intensified blues may be perceived as a commonsense view of a watery environment. When considering the environment in terms of wetness, it becomes difficult to distinguish the boundaries between water and land. The borders around the wetland get confused, which may further prompt discussion on which forms become visible and which do not.4
