The waves that disappeared—Art duo Cooking Sections track lost tides in new installation

Art duo Cooking Sections bring their immersive, environmental practice to Centro Botín in Santander with a stirring audio-visual exploration of lost waves. Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe are known for deeply researched projects that sometimes lead to tangible change.

In 2020, they prompted Tate to remove farmed salmon from its menu, while their Ministry of Sewers at the 2025 Folkestone Triennial invited the public to submit official complaints about sea pollution. This fascination with intertidal zones, subject to habitat loss, blurry legal systems and extreme weather events, fuels Waves Lost at Sea (until 1March).

“There is a lot of activism happening in the region,” says Pascual. “We’re offering the work as a platform for conversations to grow.” They were invited by Centro Botín to be part of a 30-year programme that has offered residencies and grants to artists such as Tacita Dean and Mona Hatoum. “We wanted someone who could look at this beautiful, picturesque bay through a more critical lens,” says the exhibition curator Bárbara Rodríguez, noting that Cooking Sections make their work accessible “through humour, charisma, and engaging with local concerns of the community.”

The Basque Country is famous for surfing, attracting visitors from around the world for La Vaca Gigante wave (The Giant Cow). While many waves return repeatedly to the same spots, some are forever lost to sea dredging, new ports and developments. The Giant Cow is going strong, but Cooking Sections learned of a nearby wave that has disappeared.

Working with biologists and engineers from University de Cantabria’s GeoOcean project, they researched this and ten more that have been lost globally. “How to understand these phenomena of appearance and disappearance in a post-industrial world?” says Pascual. “For many years we’ve been looking into the idea of reading: landscapes, oyster shells, the colour of salmon. This exhibition continues that trajectory, trying to read waves.”

The museum has sweeping windows, overlooking the sea, mountains, and city. A white fabric structure will cocoon the space, with 11 slinky-like forms hanging in the middle. Performers are activated one at a time, becoming one with its whooshing motions and slapping noises. Musician Duval Timothy has explored the history of each lost wave, composing 11 pieces of 30-minute, looped sound. Research is written around the walls, and the space is intended to be cosy and reflective. “The soundscape translates the immensity of the sea into the gallery,” says Schwabe.

“To me this is a monument to natural entities,” says Rodríguez, explaining how the exhibition counters traditional public monuments to political power. The show runs as local activists are petitioning to declare seven iconic waves as intangible monuments. “One side can’t work without the other,” says Schwabe. “From our position interacting with cultural institutions, we amplify the voices of those who are fighting on the ground.”