“Water Line” bridges the divides of water issues
Slowly, but with certainty and skill, Denver’s galleries have begun taking on the difficult politics of the day and doing that thing we count on art to do — give us new ways to think about controversial topics that rip us apart, and develop a common language that allows people to discuss issues across emotional divides.
This has, of course, been a particularly crucial need since last November, when a new administration was elected to run the country with less than half the popular vote and things naturally began to boil among the citizenry. But it
seemed to take curators a while to catch up. They’re a thoughtful bunch by training, for better or worse, and they can be deliberative to a fault.
The local leaders, though, are the ones who had a head start, like the Center for Visual Art, where lead curator Cecily Cullen has been combining the rigor solid exhibitions require with a keen awareness of the social conditions around her. She’s an activist, but with a comprehensive and scholarly approach that has allowed CVA lately to show everything from still-pungent political cartoons from the 18th century to present-day scenes of destruction captured by photographers living in Middle East danger zones.
The current attraction, “Water Line: A Creative Exchange,” brings that world view together for an issue that crosses oceans — the availability of clean water and the rights of people to control the flow of a necessary resource wherever they live. It’s an entertaining exhibition, certainly one of the best shows here in 2017, though it can be distressing.
Consider artist Aurora Robson’s plastic sea creatures with names like “Ona” and “Isla.” They are large-scale sculptures that sit on the floor, rendered in bright reds, pinks and blues, and constructed from found plastic debris in waterways.
They are frilly and hairy; fun to gaze upon, but ultimately daunting. The material they are made from is choking streams and killing wildlife. At first, the objects seem like fuzzy jellyfish but they are actually monsters in disguise.
There’s a similar effect with the piece “Water from Flint, Michigan,” from the duo Matt Jenkins and Lynna Kaucheck. They merely pulled water from a random faucet — in this case on “6/10/17 from the home of Melissa Mays” — and placed it in a clear
glass pitcher and drinking vessel. It sits on a white pedestal at CVA, a strikingly simple, ready-made piece of art, untouched by the artists, that makes a visibly cloudy point about the worst domestic water
crisis of the decade.
There are grander — and showier — gestures in “Water Line.” Cannupa Hanska Luger, who made a name for his work through protests against a riverthreatening pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in his native Dakotas, presents a giant snake that stretches 30 feet made of discarded oil barrels and shredded abandoned truck tires. He titles it, ironically, “This Is Not a Snake.”
Vibha Galhotra, who was born and raised in India, goes to her own extremes. In one piece, she creates a ceiling-to-floor waterfall made from thousands of ghungroos, the tiny bells Indian costumers sew together for ankle and wrist bracelets that jangle during ceremonial dances. It seeps unpredictably and uncomfortably into the gallery space.
Another Galhotra piece features 365 tiny vials of water, laid out like toy soldiers in formation on the floor. Each contains a daily sample of water taken from the notoriously polluted Yamuna River in Northern India, and its presentation here, en masse, underscores the relentless problems created by the river’s sorry state.
Even grander is Anna Mckee’s “WAIS Reliquary: 68,000 Years,” a hanging, sculptural installation made of 3,405 glass ampules sewn to the bottom of 678 silk panels. It hangs in the back of the gallery and appears as a beautiful, colorful wave. A sound installation, composed by Steve Peters, surrounds the piece evoking the tinks and grinds of these maturing islands of ice.
Inside the ampules are water samples taken from divide where water flows in different directions from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Researchers have used this massive sheet, a frozen record of climate changes going back to paleo times, to examine the effects of climate alterations today. Mckee preserves the liquid, almost as a religious object, or holy water, underscoring its reverential importance to the planet.
“Water Line” crosses the boundaries of media. There are photographs and video, paintings, prints and sculpture. While some pieces are more subtle than others, it comes together to form a glaring picture of a world where issues are both global and local; they exist on glaciers, but also in glasses of water.
It accomplishes, directly, that thing we need art to do — to point out the smallness of big topics. It leans, no doubt, toward the progressive side of politics, but it frames things as a dialogue, so we can see in colorful, creative ways the impact our actions have on other human beings around us.