Mollusks poster by Ocèane Jacob

Camouflage is an ode to the ingenuity of life concealed beneath the ocean’s surface. This series immerses viewers in a vivid underwater realm, revealing the extraordinary palette of colors and patterns found within three specific groups: fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. Rather than focusing on whole forms, Jacob magnifies fragments—a yellow stripe on a blue fin, a white dot on a black scale, a purple tentacle, or an orange spot on a green mussel. These close-up details speak to the abundance, beauty, and complexity of marine life, much of which remains unseen and unknown.

Hidden within each tableau is an uninvited intruder: plastic. Collected from the beaches of the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean, these fragments blend almost imperceptibly into the natural patterns, underscoring the omnipresence of pollution in marine ecosystems. Their playful concealment invites discovery, yet their presence carries a sobering reminder of the Anthropocene’s reach and the contaminants ingested by marine life. Each painting is paired with a framed caption listing the depicted species in both English and Linnaean binomial nomenclature, typed on an old ribbon typewriter. This mode of presentation recalls the tradition of the cabinet of curiosities, where the scientific and the aesthetic converge. In Camouflage, viewers encounter new species while being quietly confronted with humanity’s lasting imprint on the ocean’s intricate and fragile world.

 Océane Jacob (b. 1996, Hong Kong) is a French multidisciplinary artist and environmentalist whose practice spans sculpture, painting, and photography. Living between Hong Kong and Bordeaux, she works at the intersection of art and marine conservation. Through her ongoing thematic exploration In Deep Water, both literal and metaphorical, Jacob documents the beauty and fragility of underwater ecosystems while confronting urgent issues such as overfishing, pollution, climate change, and ocean acidification. Her public installations, often created in collaboration with local communities, have been realised in locations as diverse as Thai coral sanctuaries, French ports, and Australian coastlines. Educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Jacob’s works are held in private collections worldwide and have been featured in major exhibitions including Sculpture by the Sea (Sydney & Cottesloe), Saint-Gervais Biennale, and ArtGenève.

This artwork was part of EYES WIDE SHUT exhibition in August/September 2025 as part of Kunsttage Basel. 

To navigate the present moment is to move through a dense, shifting labyrinth, one in which historical amnesia, systemic obfuscation, and collective inertia coexist with urgency, resistance, and revelation. EYES WIDE SHUT brings together seven artists from Switzerland, Poland, Italy, and France whose practices dissect the layers of this contemporary maze, revealing the dissonance between perception and reality.
The exhibition title evokes a paradox: the simultaneous act of seeing and refusing to acknowledge, of knowing and yet choosing to look away.