Halite-NaCl: Essays on Salt

Halite, commonly known as table salt, sea salt, or rock salt, is composed of sodium chloride (NaCl). Its a mineral that is used in everyday life on our meals and it exists naturally in Sea Water and salt beds or mines.

This project investigate the cultural, historical, material, and environmental significance of salt through a decolonial lens, pointing the city of Aberdeen and its maritime and colonial history as a starting point. Grounded in the broader context of foodscapes and foodways, the research explores salt not only as a traded commodity within the British Empire but salt also as a metaphor for knowledge and relationships—examined through its physical properties of transparency, opacity, and translucency and its relations with art, artistic language and knowledge.

This Practice based research project is based in Aberdeen at Gray´s School of art as part of the Freeland fellowship 2025- 2026 and its field research component is based on a partnership with St Andrews Botanical Gardens.