We don’t just have a close relationship with water: we are water. 70% of our bodies and 71% of the planet are water, but only 2% is freshwater. Water is a finite resource that circulates, regenerates, and transforms, but cannot be created. The natural cycle can no longer keep pace with global demand: if in 1900 humanity consumed about 670 km³ annually, today it consumes nearly 4,000[1]. We are, therefore, facing an ecological crisis that challenges the way we consume and manage this common good, which is also a human right.
The renewable water available—from rain, aquifers, reservoirs, or tanks—depends on a complex infrastructure for collection, transportation, and treatment: wells, canals, desalination plants, and wastewater treatment plants. All of this forms a vital network that sustains human life, but also industrial, agricultural, and energy resources. It is no coincidence that the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale placed water at the center of the debate: while the Catalan Pavilion championed radical imagination as a tool to address its crisis, Benedetta Tagliabue’s project, The Architecture of Virtual Water, made the invisible water footprint visible.
Drinking, eating, producing, and moving around require water. Therefore, almost all countries have Water Laws that regulate usage rights, quality, services, and tariffs, as well as the protection of rivers and lakes. Despite being a free resource, its treatment and distribution entail high costs. In many territories, scarcity and unequal access have generated tensions (water wars) that cross borders: this is the case with the conflicts around the Tigris and Euphrates, the Crimean Canal, Lake Chad, and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as of abuses by transnational corporations in strategic economic sectors, which cause a negative impact on the environment and the affected communities[2].
Given this scenario, it is necessary to imagine hydro-social pacts[3] that integrate scientific, community, and environmental knowledge to ensure sustainable and fair management. As Yayo Herrero[4] argues, recovering the memory of the five elements—water, air, earth, fire, and life—is essential to rethinking our relationship with the world. Water is a resource, a metaphor, and a memory; a force that shapes territories, bodies, and relationships.
Within this framework, Water Cartographies proposes a journey through four artistic practices that transform water into a device of perception, a historical trace, a genealogy of the body, and a tool of resistance. The exhibition unfolds as a confluence of perspectives that link ecology, spirituality, technology, and care. The works invite us to pause, to listen to the passage of time and the body, to perceive liquidity as a space of relationship and shared memory.
Anna Dot. Libacions [Libations] (2022–ongoing)
Libations is a project consisting of a series of ceramic pateras and collective actions. It is inspired by Greek libation rituals, in which water or wine was poured in honor of the deceased. The vases, decorated with local flora and fauna, have been activated in Paris, Villava, and Sant Martí d’Empúries. In this latest action, included in the exhibition Waters, Languages, and Forgetfulness (Museo del Mediterráneo, 2024), the libations followed the historical path of the Ter River, from Colomers to the Mediterranean, paying homage to an ancient branch of the river now reduced to irrigation canals. Libations combines research, poetic gesture, and community, reminding us that every drop contains a story.
Caterina Miralles Tagliabue. 0.5 (2025)
0.5 is an audiovisual installation that contrasts the technological intelligence of climate research centers with the wisdom of the fishermen of the Venetian Lagoon. The title, “0.5 cm,” alludes to the annual rise in water levels, a symbol of the impact of the Anthropocene. Divided into four thematic sections, it combines data, stories, and landscapes to reflect on ecology, memory, and the coexistence of human and non-human forms of knowledge. The work becomes a space for observation and listening where scientific information and traditional wisdom converge in a single flow.
Fina Miralles. Mar, cel i terra [Sea, Sky, and Earth] (1973) and El retorn [The Return] (2012)
Key figure of the Catalan conceptual art, Miralles has explored the direct relationship between body and nature through actions with earth, grass, stones, and water. Sea, Sky, and Earth is a collage that combines words and images—sea, sky, cloud, rain, sun—to allude to the ecosystem as a living unit. The Return is the photographic record of a later action that directly connects with those carried out in the 1970s (Relationships. The Body’s Relationship with Water. The Body in the Sea) and also relates to his work on the figure of women, the fountain, the sea, and women of water as forms of ancestral memory. As the artist says: “What is important is the water that sings, the living water. The water sings, the birds sing, the mermaids, the whales, and we sing.”[5] His work invites us to relearn how to listen to this primal song, as an act of affirmation and grounding.
Stella Rahola Matutes. La Cronometradora [The Timekeeper] (2023)
The Timekeeper is an installation that turns glass into a metaphor for water and time. Through a translucent and breathing architecture, the work reflects on the artisanal and scientific process of the material, its porous and mutable nature. Rahola proposes a “drinkable” art, made of steam and light, that reminds us of the interdependence between matter, medium, and body. Her research connects tradition and innovation, manual knowledge and technology, and champions an artistic practice committed to sustainability and caring for the planet.
Thus, Water Cartographies traces an itinerary that combines sensitivity, knowledge, and commitment. The works assembled speak to the need to imagine a new water culture—a culture that recognizes water not as a resource to be exploited, but as a shared way of life. In times of climate emergency, these practices invite us to think from the perspective of flow, to understand that, like water, we too are part of an endless cycle of transformation and return.
[Water Cartographies is a group exhibition curated by Montse Badia, with the artists Anna Dot, Fina Miralles, Caterina Miralles Tagliabue, Stella Rahola Matutes, and presented at the Fundació Úniques 11/6/25 – 2/14/26]
[1] Paniagua, Jesús M. Agua. Historia, Tecnología y Futuro [Water. History, Technology, and the Future]. Ed. Guadalmazán, Madrid 2023.
[2] Arenal Lora, Libia (ed.), Negocios insaciables: Estados, Transnacionales, Derechos humanos y Agua. [Insatiable Business: States, Transnational Corporations, Human Rights, and Water]. Ed. Fundación para la Cooperación APY Solidaridad en Acción, 2015.
[3] Cerarols Ramírez, Rosa. “Hydrosocial Pact” at 100 words for the water: a vocabulary. (Ed. Eva Franch i Gilabert, Mireia Luzárraga, Alejandro Muiño). Catalog Catalonia in Venice. Water Parliaments. Collateral Event of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition _ La Biennale di Venezia. Lars Müller Publishers, Institut Ramon Llull and Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC), 2025
[4] Herrero, Yayo. Los cinco elementos. Una cartilla de alfabetización ecológica. [The Five Elements: An Ecological Literacy Primer] Arcàdia Editors. Barcelona, 2021.
[5] Fina Miralles in conversation with Mireia Sallarès. “The water sings, we sing”. Video-interview. Fons #06 MACBA, 2021
