Selkies, or seal women, are shape-shifting creatures from Celtic and Scandinavian folklore who move between the parallel worlds of sea and land, never truly belonging to either. Here the fragmented images are all that exists of a film which begins at the end of the selkie myth, taking place after the seal mother has left her human children behind and returned to the underwater realm. Shot on Super 8 film in northern Iceland near the fjords of Skagafjördur, the exact narrative of the fragments are unimportant. Instead of decoding them, the viewer may instead sense an absence, one that almost has its own agency.
Interested in folk legends that muddy the distinction between human and non-human, artist Lucy Cordes Engelman engages with her material as a collaborator, always aware of its own distinct and independent power. Here, she approaches the work as elements of a longing for the watery origins of life -- a longing that deepens with a recognition of the ocean's mighty power over us.