The future of the oceans is explored in the Sainsbury Centre’s extensive 2025 exhibition programme.
Can the Seas Survive Us?
The Sainsbury Centre continues its innovative series of investigative exhibitions in 2025 with a new programme that charts a course through the story of the world’s oceans and the precarious future they may be heading towards.
As sea levels rise, oceans are also warming, becoming more acidic and containing less oxygen. The United Nations describe the oceans as "overwhelmed" as humans overfish, pollute, and destroy habitats, with the ocean's health declining at an "alarming rate".
Featuring contemporary art, historical paintings, ancient atlases and maps from across the globe, the season explores humanity’s enduring and complex relationship with the sea.
Three concurrent exhibitions explore Can the Seas Survive Us?, examining the choices shaping our future due to climate change, while emphasising the vital importance of the oceans and the life beneath the waves for the viability of our shared future.
Featured exhibitions:
A World of Water, 15 March – 3 August 2025
A day at the seaside or rain at Wimbledon. So much of our shared experience of the British summer involves water. But what would the world be like without water, or more critically, without our seas and oceans and all the lifeforce within it?
Darwin in Paradise Camp: Yuki Kihara, 15 March 2025 – 3 August 2025
The Sainsbury Centre is proud to host the UK premiere of Paradise Camp, a celebrated work by Yuki Kihara (b.1975), an interdisciplinary artist of Sāmoan and Japanese descent, which will be exhibited alongside newly commissioned work titled Darwin Drag.
Sea Inside, 7 June – 26 October 2025
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to live underwater, to be inside a shell, or even the belly of a whale? Sea Inside turns our oceanic gaze towards the sea’s more intimate spaces – whether physical, psychological or imaginary – and dives into shared watery origins, Indigenous ways of life and the items we remove from the sea to display on land.
This trio of exhibitions consider the seas’ fluidity as a powerful metaphor; ranging from our need to navigate a way through turbulent times, to champion and learn from Indigenous knowledge, seize the opportunities presented by the sea as a regenerative, sustainable energy source, recognising its relentless, destructive power in ways that are crucially felt and experienced by low-lying small island nations such as the Maldives and Kiribati, along with coastal communities, including several here in Norfolk.
Can the Seas Survive Us? 15 March - 26 October 2025
University of East Anglia, Norfolk Road, Norwich NR4 7TJ
Further Information: Can the Seas Survive Us? - Sainsbury Centre