March 8–April 29, 2023 

Constellation Studios, 2055 O Street, Lincoln, NE 

Organized by Katie Anania, Dorota Biczel, Karen Kunc, and Jessica Santone 

Opening reception March 8, 6–8pm 

 

Water’s life-sustaining work requires multiple languages to describe. We may think about water in terms of the systems that distribute it: the lakes, rivers, vessels, and other infrastructures that direct it to humans or other-than-humans. As a constitutive element of most organisms, it is intimately linked with embodiment and survival. For many creatures, it is home. The works featured here suggest new ways to narrate, interpret, or discuss water; and to recover lost histories of its use. Approaching Water shows the depth and breadth of artistic practices that engage with water as a key substance vested with multiple social, political, economic, and cultural interests. Using a variety of media, from graphic novels to design interventions to soundworks, the works ask viewers to think expansively about water and its social construction. 

 

Approaching Water includes works by Luz María Bedoya, Vaughn Bell, Jess Benjamin, Alex Braidwood, Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, Tia-Simone Gardner, Regan Golden, Joan Hall, Susan Knight, Salvador Lindquist, Colin Matthes, Mystic Multiples, Florence Neal, Musuk Nolte, Alison Rowe, and Geo Rutherford.

In collaboration with Karen Kunc of Constellation Studios, this exhibition is organized by ADE/s (Art, Data, & Environments), a group dedicated to the critical and creative study of data representation based at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The curatorial team– Katie Anania, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Dorota Biczel and Jessica Santone, Post-doctoral Scholars in Art History and Ecology, and Cooper Stiglitz, MA candidate in Art History at UNL–are funded by the National Science Foundation and engage in collaborative research to decenter Eurocentric data visualization principles. Approaching Water coincides with the second Conference on Biological Stoichiometry (CoBS), a scientific conference to be held at UNL in March 2023.