Hundreds have lived with out love, Auden reminds us, however not a single one with out water. Certainly, by the third millennium, clear water ought to be an inalienable proper of everybody. However ours is an imperfect world. A few of us are born fortunate and revel in water as a pure useful resource, as plentiful and accessible as air, however that is an exception to the rule, geographically and traditionally talking. Water is like cash: it’s solely once you don’t have it that you just notice how a lot you want it.
How can one exhibition comprehensively cowl such a big matter? Water is a medical necessity, a scientific miracle, a supply of non secular and inventive reverence. “Thirst: In Search of Freshwater,” a significant exhibition on the Wellcome Assortment in London, makes an attempt to seize freshwater by way of various lenses—inventive, scientific, sociological and historic. “Thirst” spotlights how reliant we’re on water, not simply biologically however culturally too. There’s a lot packed into “Thirst” that it may simply really feel overwhelming, however this capacious present is neatly divided into subsections (aridity, rain, glaciers, floor water and groundwater), serving to viewers movement by way of the numerous supplies. The result’s a stunningly spectacular present.
Curator Janice Li should be praised for bringing collectively so many objects, themes and concepts underneath the only banner of freshwater. There’s a beautiful vary of supplies on show: images, movies, artifacts, audio, tapestries and V.R. All are used to inform a narrative of water or its absence. We see images of drought and movies of floods. The exhibition is within the practices of the previous, the inequities of the current and the turbulence of the longer term.
A key theme of “Thirst” is how water has been mismanaged by way of the years, whether or not by colonial powers or as we speak by these industries driving the local weather disaster. A number of the shows are standard museum items—as an illustration, maps depicting the destruction of Iraq’s marshes, which have been drained by Saddam Hussein to make approach for oil growth. However a lot of the exhibition’s items are much less diagrammatic. Mineral Lick, for instance, is a sculpture by Lebanese artist Dala Masser, assembling completely different textures collectively to focus on Lebanon’s uncared for public water infrastructure. The artist calls her sculpture a “hydromap of Beirut.”
“Thirst” excels in its care to cowl not solely a variety of supplies but additionally a variety of viewpoints, eschewing any naïve Western notion of water as a common proper and as a substitute seeing water in its correct context—that’s, a commodity that’s owned, managed and mismanaged by the highly effective. In doing so, “Thirst” doesn’t ignore the politics of water however reasonably dives proper in. The present is way richer in consequence.
There are some sensible images all through “Thirst” that emphasize the politics of water. Early on within the exhibition, we see pictures from Earlier than It’s Gone, M’hammed Kilito’s ongoing photographic venture on oasis degradation in Morocco, a rustic that has been in drought since 2018. We’re reminded that drought is as a lot a human expertise as a pure phenomenon. However there’s a {photograph} elsewhere in “Thirst” that’s in all probability essentially the most shifting second in your complete exhibition.
Ein Aouja is a picture by Palestinian-American artist Adam Rouhana, displaying a bunch of males having fun with the water within the West Financial institution. Even in 2022, when the picture was taken, the scene was tinged with violence (Rouhana and the bathers have been underneath surveillance by Israeli authorities), however the pleasure within the males’s faces has taken on a tragic that means within the few quick years since then. Proscribing entry to water is without doubt one of the easiest methods an occupying pressure can management a weaker inhabitants. The inclusion of Rouhana’s buoyant {photograph} displaying Palestinian pleasure helps to raise the politics of “Thirst” past a binary dialogue of water being both accessible or not. As an alternative, Rouhana’s {photograph} helps situate viewers in a extra complicated social context, one during which water represents a proper to happiness, not simply survival. It’s inconceivable to have a look at the liberty captured in Ein Aouja—as violence in Gaza and the West Financial institution reaches unprecedented ranges—and never lament that water continues to be getting used as a weapon by the sturdy in opposition to the weak.
Some images are extra pleasing. Significantly beautiful for British viewers will probably be Chloe Dewe Matthews’s collection of images Thames Log, displaying completely different non secular and non secular teams utilizing the Thames River in London as a web site of non secular follow, from African Pentecostal baptism to Pagan rituals. There are a number of great installations which might be extra conceptual than documentary. Why has water been so necessary to artists throughout cultures all through the centuries? D. H. Lawrence wrote about this ineffable high quality when he described water as being “hydrogen two elements, oxygen one, however there may be additionally a 3rd factor, that makes it water, and no one is aware of what it’s.”
Water shortage will more and more be a function of our fractious world. Water shortages are already exacerbating and fueling armed battle. It will certainly solely improve because the local weather disaster worsens. There are stunning moments within the present, however “Thirst” at occasions looks like an uncomfortable augury of our water-scarce future. But when the exhibition argues something, it’s that we should always take heed to various views and data methods, renouncing pondering that sees water as a commodity to be managed. A notice on the wall tells viewers that “the regenerative energy of water provides hope as we now have the present local weather disaster. We will be taught from its cyclical, therapeutic nature, in addition to from communities, previous and current, who create abundance out of shortage.” “Thirst” emphasizes the cyclical nature of water, returning to it again and again within the exhibition. Maybe that’s what Hermann Hesse meant when he described water as “the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Being.”
“Thirst: In Search of Freshwater” is on view at The Wellcome Assortment by way of February 1, 2026.
Extra exhibition critiques
