Mo Ganji: Cumberlandian Combshell | Cumberland-Kammmuschel | Epioblasma brevidens | No. 066/250 from work group 8/99

Cumberlandian Combshell | Cumberland-Kammmuschel | Epioblasma brevidens

Mo Ganji’s single line reflects on the Cumberlandian combshell — a small freshwater mussel with a sculpted, ridged shell — as a pared-down gesture that holds only the essential whisper of form. The continuous line hints at a bivalve outline, yet leaves room for ambiguity, allowing the being to emerge before the constraints of naming are imposed. In letting detail fall away, Ganji draws attention to an essence that precedes classification.

Epioblasma brevidens is listed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List. Native to the Cumberland and Tennessee River systems in the United States, this mussel once occupied a broad range of clean, fast-flowing streams and rivers. Today, it persists only in a few small, fragmented populations, with many former habitats degraded or lost.

Major threats include dam construction that alters natural flow regimes, sedimentation from agriculture and development, water pollution, and the decline of native host fish required for the mussel’s larval stage. Because freshwater mussels are highly sensitive to water quality and hydrology, even seemingly modest ecological changes can undermine survival and reproduction. Limited dispersal further restricts the species’ ability to recolonize suitable areas.

Ganji’s single line offers a moment in which the mussel’s quiet presence can be sensed apart from the frameworks humans use to sort and define life. The distilled contour calls attention to how easily such beings vanish from perception — and how the illusion of human separateness obscures the truth that our own well-being is bound to the same freshwater systems we strain, reshape, and too often neglect.