Young bay mud—a scientific term for ecologically rich and water-saturated deposits that are less than ten thousand years old—underlies much of the San Francisco Bay Area. A ground that uniquely encourages biodiversity but resists human development, young bay mud shapes human experience of and interaction with the region and offers a potent vantage point to consider artistic explorations of ecological entanglement and belonging in the Bay Area.

Young bay mud highlights artists who are using mud as both a material and a conceptual framework to consider the relationship between humans and our local environment. The artists included—Ashwini Bhat, Mercedes Dorame, Futurefarmers, Tanja Geis, and Joanna Keane Lopez— have lived in Northern California, and each build upon local histories and ecologies in their work.

With the understanding that issues faced by the region—whether climate change or the housing crisis—are human-made and interconnected, the artists invoke indigenous, ancestral, sensorial, and multispecies knowledge to propose alternative ways of relating to our immediate environment.