Critics

Exhibitions

Water woes

Exhibition

Octavi Planells | 11 may 2010

Exhibition: Water, Rivers and People
Center: Maritime Museum of Barcelona
(av. de les Drassanes, s/n, 08001, Barcelona)
Phone: 933429920
E-mail: m.maritim@diba.cat

A tribute to people dispossessed of their land. A people deprived of a vital resource. Those who become ill from the unhygienic conditions that surround them. Victims of natural disasters compounded by human greed. Those who die unjustly. Those who defend a fundamental right. A tribute to all those whose voices have been silenced, repressed and forgotten. All because of that most precious resource: water.

The exhibition “Water, Rivers and People” on display at the Maritime Museum of Barcelona till May 30 is the platform that the eponymous association has used to pay homage to those harmed by the global conflicts over water resources. It offers the testimonies of people dwarfed by the economic, political and cultural forces of the day. Actually, it is not an exhibition; it is a detailed job of investigative journalism and photography, a devastating document that denounces a widespread abuse of power, showing the most perverse side of the vital liquid: water as a weapon, as an object of conflict, as a source of wealth and ambition, as a dissolvent of scruples and a cause of personal, social, economic and environmental tragedies.

An exhibition that aims to move hearts, engage minds and ignite wills to face the global water crisis, according to the exhibition director Pedro Arrojo, physicist and economist at the University of Zaragoza who specializes in the economics of water and is a promoter of the New Water Culture Foundation. The exhibition’s hundreds of snapshots and the firsthand accounts have an overwhelming emotional impact on the visitor. The director stresses the desire to show the human profile of victims and social activists who usually have been invisible or, at best, turned into cold statistics. There is no doubt that this has been achieved.

“Water, Rivers and People,” while taking in the entire world, mainly focuses on those regions with the greatest socio-political and environmental complications and those hardest hit by the water crisis. It is divided into six thematic areas that include the forced displacement of entire villages by the construction of large dams, the destruction of entire ecosystems and fisheries and their impacts on human hunger, the problems associated with water privatization and the risks the poorest face from natural and man-made disasters. Even in the developed world, the exhibition presents examples that demonstrate the helplessness of groups with fewer resources.

But fortunately, the exhibition also leaves room for hope in a corner dedicated to “Victories and Solutions” that focuses on initiatives to combat corrupt policies and the privatization of public water services. Movements which qualify water as a right and not just as a resource. Although it is a traveling exhibition, it includes a section devoted to Catalan waterways and the social mobilizations that have raised public awareness about pollution, transfers, taxes and access.

The origin of this project dates back to 2000, following the submission of the Final Report of the World Commission on Dams. The document acknowledged serious difficulties in obtaining data on the volume of water held by the almost 50,000 large dams built during the twentieth century as well as in quantifying the number of people forcibly displaced by their construction, although estimates range between 40 and 80 million. The exhibition’s organizers found that this figure, both large and vague, reflects the invisibility of the victims. This prompted them to think of constructing a visible international event about these nameless millions, but as their research deepened, the organizers found that this state of invisibility branched into a myriad of problems including access to drinking water, the privatization of resource ownership and the destruction of fishing areas, to name just a few.

“Water, Rivers and People” rests on a huge collection of documents and an effort of synthesis of equal magnitude. Piles of documents, books, written testimony and all kinds of audiovisual materials have been collected over the last decade and condensed into the texts found in the exhibition. The content is, therefore, thorough, very well researched and documented. The graphic and exhibition design blend perfectly with the subject matter: an austere aesthetic but one that is not deficient in its ability to present the material in an evocative manner. In addition, for each day that the exhibition is in Barcelona, the organizers have prepared parallel activities: lectures, seminars, visits, documentaries and panel discussions along with a comprehensive website and an educational program. The exhibition and the related activities are, in short, highly recommended.

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