Nadia Huggins Transformation No. 4

Nadia Huggins grew up in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, where she is currently based. A self-taught artist, she swims daily with a camera to record her body in the ocean and the marine organisms that inhabit the reefs close to her home. Her images act as witness to how the marine environment changes over time, exploring ecology, identity, and memory, and raising awareness of the threat of pollution and climate change to the health of our seas.

Huggins’ Transformation series (2014–2016) considers her relationship with marine ecosystems, and documents the underwater life that surrounds her. Displayed in Baltic’s Lightbox, Transformation 4 combines a self-portrait with an image of brain coral, an organism which can grow up to six feet tall and live for up to 900 years. The images are positioned side-by-side; the space between them evokes the act of resurfacing from the underwater environment, and the separation between human and marine worlds.

In the ocean, Huggins experiences a sense of freedom. Gender and racial constraints disappear as the body moves differently, aided by buoyancy and flow. However, her personal liberation is set against a backdrop of loss. The artist’s close observation of coral and reef life documents species that are themselves in decline. By presenting both human and non-human forms in the same place, the series stages a conversation about co-existence, shared vulnerability, and the fragile conditions that sustain life. Huggins’ work invites us to consider how human and marine ecologies shape one another and to register what is at stake when the equilibrium of natural environments is disturbed.

This Lightbox commission is presented in conjunction with Baltic’s Level 4 exhibition For All At Last Return, which is on display from 8 November 2025 – 7 June 2026.