‘For All At Last Return’ featuring Otobong Nkanga at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom

31 October 2025

From 8 Nov 2025 – 7 June 2026, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art will present ‘For All At Last Return’ featuring Otobong Nkanga. This new group exhibition, focusing on marine ecosystems, will explore different ocean habitats, from near-shore and intertidal zones to coral reefs, the open ocean and the deep sea, considering our relationships with these fragile environments and their dependent communities.

Marine waters cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, supporting a vast amount of life, from microbes to marine megafauna. The ocean is vital for our survival, providing us with oxygen, food, energy and medicines and absorbing excess carbon from the atmosphere. However, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, plastic and chemical pollution and overfishing are degrading marine habitats and pushing many species to the brink of extinction.

‘For All At Last Return features’ the work of British and international artists for whom the health of the ocean is an enduring concern. This immersive exhibition journeys through underwater worlds from the ocean’s surface to the seabed, examining the impact of human activity on marine habitats and aquatic life.

Otobong Nkanga’s work foregrounds ecological themes of relationality and becoming through a distilled poetics of entanglement. Her multidisciplinary practice examines the complex social, political, and material relationships between bodies, territories, minerals and the earth.

Find out more via Baltic.

Image: Otobong Nkanga, Tied to the Other Side, 2021, Woven textile, 3.5 x 6 m, Photo: Wim van Dongen