Artist Juria Toramae wants to give the ocean a voice

For Moroccan-Thai photographer Juria Toramae, the concept of 'home' has always been nebulous. Her father's job as a journalist meant the family led a peripatetic life for many years; Toramae describes being shuttled between Northern Africa and Southeast Asia for the larger part of her childhood. 

But through it all there was one constant: The ocean. "My first memory was going to the coast in Morocco, where I was born," says Toramae, "so coming to Singapore brought back that sense of familiarity."

It's why the ocean – and its inhabitants – make up such an inextricable part of her repertoire. In 'Before the Grey Dawn Breaks,' Toramae documents marine life in shallow waters during low spring tide – a surreal, liminal space that only exists for a brief time. Meanwhile, 'Map-making' charts the rapacious speed of land reclamation in Singapore, showing just how much ocean space has been lost in the country's search for land.

But Toramae is more than just a nature photographer. "I'm not just a passive watcher," she explains. "I'm interested in how the sea affects us, and vice versa."

You've said that people are 'dependant, but disconnected' from nature. How have you seen this in action?

I had a residency at the Substation, and it was an installation of videos – just collages of marine life around Singapore. And there was a young man that came in, maybe in his 20s, and he was kind of upset. He said: 'These photos can't be from Singapore. The water is so brown, there's no way these things can be here.'

So that encounter kind of threw me off a bit. It's not like we can blame people for being out of touch with nature: Is there really a chance, an avenue for them to interact with it?
I also feel like we need to learn how to interact with nature. For example, since the pandemic began, more people are doing intertidal walks... But I saw people doing things like picking up starfishes and putting them in buckets. And I'd be this aunty chasing families, going: 'Can you please return that starfish! What are you gonna do with it?'

That lack of access probably affects how we interact with nature. We don't live in the water, so sometimes we forget about it. And that's one of the things that worries me a lot. People feel compelled to own and possess things – especially with nature. But we should rethink our relationship with this, because these are living things.

Is there a sense of frustration attached to your work, vis-à-vis the current ecological situation?

There's this sense of urgency in my work – it also feels surreal because certain subjects or landscapes might not always exist. For example, there's this huge, major seagrass patch in Johor Bahru – it's so beautiful, and you just walk through and you see so many more things than I'd see in Singapore. But you look across and you just see this concrete monstrosity of an integrated residential development. And it's heart-breaking, because I know eventually, this seagrass patch is going to go.

The climate situation does frustrate me. In a way, you can't really keep an optimistic view all the time. Like when you see coral bleaching happening, or you hear that, this area is slated for land reclamation in 2030, then it all feels like an impending doom.

It's inevitable to feel sad – but we just have to make sure that it doesn't make us hopeless. Because then people might think: 'Okay, everything's gonna go anyway, I might as well just live it up.' But everything does matter, even though you might think you're just one person. There's an accumulative effect to everything that we do; my work might not have a direct impact on the environment, but hopefully through engaging with others, it can.