Water

Water

The first section of the exhibition considers the environment poetically. Here, artists from the Global South engage with the idea of water as connected to places, people and identity, and as an element that can be experienced as “under the sea”, as “rain”, as a “flood” or as “contained in vessels”. Intense colours play an important part in representing the concepts in the various artworks, alongside vernacular objects from local indigenous sources.

Here we see water is “sea”, “river delta”, “contained in a vessel” and “rain”. Conceptually, water is an expression of a community’s identity, summoned as rain, preserved to sustain life and to inspire ideas about our natural and biological world in oral narratives.

Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 1. Water: Narrative and Myth-Making: Ernesto Neto, Um dia todos fomos peixes (One day we were all fish) (2017). © Ernesto Neto; Rithika Merchant, Transtidal (2022). © Rithika Merchant (2022);  Zizipho Poswa, uNa’kaMzingisi (Mzingisi’s Mother) (2024). © Zizipho Poswa; Bronwyn Katz, Kai tus tu (Great rain rain) (2023). © Bronwyn Katz. Photos Graham De Lacy.