What is your relationship with water? Part IV

“What is your relationship with water?” is a participatory installation that I created for my exhibit, “In Solidarity” at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In this installation, participants are offered a piece of original art in exchange for their thoughts on their relationship with water—an act that suggests a reciprocal relationship between the artist and the viewer, and perhaps between humans and water.

Water is an essential resource that nobody, and no thing, can live without. But what’s happening to our water is pretty scary. “What is your relationship with water?” is a simple question but a critical and timely question for all of us. It is an ongoing question that I keep asking myself.

I type this question on Japanese (washi) papers that were soaked and stained in tea/coffee and water. I type on a manual typewriter over and over to meditate on the question.

At the exhibit, participants will leave the gallery with a tea stained washi paper bearing the typed question and some marks made with mineral pigment—as an invitation to plunge deeper into this question as I have been doing, and as a reminder for a deeper appreciation for water.

Installation as of October 29, 2015. It will change as participants' typed responses replace the original sheets. After completing typing their thoughts on their relationship with water, participants select any one of the original sheet with the question to take home with them. Their responses take the spot where the question was hang.