How to Carry Water

On view September 21-December 21, 2024

the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt…

Lucille Clifton
excerpt from “water sign woman”

The multidisciplinary collection of artists in this exhibition employ moving image, photography, map-making, sculptural gestures, sound, and other mediums to communicate deeply personal methods for witnessing our world at the scale of the watershed. The watershed emerges in this room as a landscape, but also as a temporal and cultural entity catalyzing movement, life, and transformation.

How to Carry Water explores the poetic ways that water holds possibilities for translucence and opacity, intimacy and immensity, connection and canyon, peril and nourishment. There are artifacts here of a very real world, and invitations to speculative ones. These artists offer deeply considered observations of the world around us–relevant to our past and considerate of our futures.

Welcome to the watershed. Carry what you can.

Featured artists: Indira Allegra, Saif Azzuz, Michael Boonstra, Carolina Caycedo, Dan Coe, Rasheena Fountain, Annelia Hillman, Sky Hopinka, Garrick Imatani, Colin Ives, Sean McFarland, Susan Murrell, Jefferson Pinder, and Margo Woloweic.

Curated by Kelly Bosworth and Ashley Stull Meyers

How to Carry Water was made possible with support from the family of Mary Jones and Thomas Hart Horning.