Yulia Belousova

Created during a residency in Mérida, Mexico—near the Chicxulub crater, where a meteorite struck Earth 66 million years ago—this video investigates the lives of fishermen in the village of Celestún. What began as a romantic inquiry into the elemental connection between humans, wind, and water, became a raw encounter with labor, invisibility, and survival. With poetic imagery, the work honors the courage of local fishermen, many of whom work in harsh conditions, without legal protections, literacy, or fuel—carried only by the air and their knowledge of the sea.

Before the domestication of land, humans turned to water: casting nets into lakes, rivers, and seas, sustained by the mystery and generosity of aquatic life. Fishing is not only a method of survival—it is a cosmology, a choreography of knowledge, intuition, and risk. In coastal towns like Celestún, the harbor has long functioned as a threshold space: between sea and land, between solitude and community, between tradition and erosion.

This work approaches this subject with an initial sense of reverence—drawn to the elemental presence of Air as a companion to the fishermen’s daily routines. But what started as a romantic research on the beauty of being a fishermen quickly transformed into a confrontation with the fragility and precarity of life on the edge. The fishermen Belousova encountered often lacked basic rights: many had never learned to read or write, had no health insurance, no legal protections, and no ownership of the vessels they sail. On days when the sea is quiet and the catch is poor, they return not only empty-handed, but indebted—to the companies that now control the boats, fuel, and terms of labor.

Through a disjointed mixture of conversations and fragmented sentences, the video evokes a sense of a broken chapter—a life lived in pieces. A single, sustained shot of the sea—serves as a metaphor for our collective blindness, our tendency to look without truly seeing. It reflects our impulse to turn away from uncomfortable realities, and from those who struggle behind the scenes of what ends up on our tables.

As with all of Belousova’s work, this piece is grounded in encounter, field research, and a deeply intuitive sensibility attuned to the interconnections between people, place, and the elements.