​Photos by Gina Clyne

 

This summer, 2025 Mohn LAND grant recipient Hannah Huntley will debut her installation Sea Fauna Follies at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. This collaboration marks the first between the historic Los Angeles organization and a contemporary artist.

Huntley’s Sea Fauna Follies is a sculptural installation that manifests an idealized, fantastical underwater utopia where symbiotic relationships between sea creatures reflect the profound need for communal dynamics. The project highlights how organisms of diverse abilities, strengths, and advantages collaborate—not for mere survival, but to revel in collective joy, beauty, pleasure, and expression. Consisting of three kinetic mobiles and a central static element on display within the historic Bob Baker Marionette Theater, Sea Fauna Follies was created using 3D modeling software and then executed using 3D printing, a medium that allowed the production process to be as accessible to the artist as possible.

 

The installation combines the aesthetic of Golden-Age Hollywood with Huntley’s own cartoon-esque forms to create a tableau of undersea cooperation. In the artist’s envisioned ecosystem, immobile sea creatures are not forced to overcome their limitations to fit into an unforgiving environment. Instead, their surroundings mold to their needs, enabling them to participate in ways that honor their individuality. Avoiding triumphalist narratives of overcoming pain, illness, or mobility limitations, the work instead embraces concepts of mutual aid, and the transformative power of collective effort.

 

The symbiotic relationships depicted in the work mirror the real connections of the artist’s life as a disabled individual—relationships and institutions that sustain, carry, and allow her to experience the fullness of being. Sea Fauna Follies is a joyful tribute to help, comfort, accommodation, and accessibility. It invites us to imagine a world where interdependence is not a burden, but a flourishing and fantastical celebration of human connection.

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Sea Fauna Follies is commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and organized by Bryan Barcena, LAND curator-at-large.

 

This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.