K (h) ELP
In a global context where the rights of women, gender minorities, and the oceans are increasingly under threat, the K(h)ELP project emerges as a work deeply rooted in the principles of ecofeminism — a school of thought that articulates the interconnected oppressions related to gender, nature, capitalism, and patriarchy. This vision intertwines with a queer perspective that challenges binary norms, deconstructs species hierarchies, and celebrates the interdependencies of the living world. In this way, K(h)ELP advocates for the rights of all living beings — human and non-human, visible and invisible.
This project finds both its material and symbolic grounding in the underwater kelp forests stretching from Alaska to Baja California, Mexico. These marine ecosystems, essential to the planet’s balance, sequester large amounts of carbon, generate oxygen, support rich biodiversity, and form the cornerstone of oceanic food webs. Yet they are disappearing at an alarming rate, threatened by global warming, ocean acidification, overfishing, and the degradation of marine habitats.
Conceived as an artistic, political, and ecological gesture, K(h)ELP highlights organic armors made from these giant Pacific kelps, collected on the beaches of California — where artist Kalie Granier lives and works — in collaboration with scientists and ecologists from The Nature Conservancy, NOAA, and Reef Check, and photographed by Alex Raduan during a research-creation residency. These seaweeds are transformed into living material, carriers of memory of natural cycles, symbols of fertility and regeneration, but also into protective shields for femininities in all their diversity — including queer, trans, and non-binary bodies — within an inclusive vision of ecology and care.
Worn by two feminine spirits — one Black, one white — these armors embody the diversity of bodies, identities, and struggles. They transcend gender binarity to evoke multiple, fluid corporealities in direct connection with the cycles of the living world. Through a series of photographic stagings by Alex Raduan, these figures invert natural and symbolic space, reactivating an ancestral, non-extractive relationship between the body and the cosmos. This carefully composed imagery rekindles the ties between humans and nature, between the sacred — yet non-essentialized — feminine, the Earth, and the ocean.
K(h)ELP invites us to rethink the role of women and gender minorities in today’s ecological and social struggles. The project offers a visual and emotional reflection on the potential alliances between the fights against patriarchy, colonialism, transphobia, and the destruction of the living world. It is a call to unlearn domination, to cultivate intersectional narratives, and to imagine fairer, more compassionate, and more livable futures.
