Filipino artist Cian Dayrit is among the artists featured in the “A World of Water,” an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in the UK, which highlights the spiritual and material significance of water.
Opening March 15, “A World of Water” launches the ambitious season named Can the Seas Survive Us?, exploring the sea’s power to shape, connect and disrupt human history.
Curated by Filipino curator John Kenneth Paranada, “A World of Water” brings together contemporary and historical artworks, ancient maps, and atlases — documents that respond to the growing climate crisis.
Dayrit, who is a CCP 13 Artists Awardee, will have three of his works on display. ‘Dam Nation’ (2023), a painting sans his signature text examines the colonial legacy of large-scale infrastructure projects like hydroelectric dams that have displaced indigenous communities.
‘State of Plantocracy’ (2023) explores how monoculture plantations continue to exploit both labor and environment.
And finally, ‘Extractione Mineralium’ (2019) confronts the violent history of mining in the Philippines.
In a statement, Dayrit said, “The climate crisis is a continuation of colonial violence. It targets the same communities that were displaced and exploited in the past. My work maps this ongoing struggle and honors the resistance of Indigenous groups fight to protect nature, the sacred seas and lands.”
The Filipino curator said the selected three works of Dayrit “construct a compelling narrative on land, sea, and resource extraction.”
“They challenge how we perceive land, power, and resistance,” Paranada adds.
“His practice critically examines land dispossession, indigenous struggles, and the ways infrastructure — such as large-scale mining, dam, and irrigation projects – is shaped by colonial histories and capital expansion,” Paranada said.
“Through his maps and cartographic interventions, Cian exposes how mapping has often served as a tool of power — to claim, control, and exploit land and resources, reinforcing systems of oppression and displacement,” he adds.
Selecting which of Dayrit’s works to include in “A World of Water” was informed by the climate crisis, Paranada tells GMA News Online on email. “While I initially selected works that aligned with the exhibition’s themes, discussions with Cian led us to consider the sustainability of transport.”
“To minimize the exhibitions carbon footprint, we prioritized works already in Europe, ensuring our selection upheld both curatorial intent and ecological responsibility,” Paranada added.
Paranada emphasizes how “water is everything” for the Philippines. “It shapes our national identity as an archipelago, but it’s also the greatest threat to our survival. Rising seas is a reality for many communities in low-lying coastal areas, and this exhibition offers a chance to explore those stories through art, design, material culture and history,” he adds.
He had wanted to include other Filipino artists like Martha Atienza, whose acclaimed video installation, Our Islands 11°16’58.4″ N 123°45’07.0″ E (2017), showcase the vulnerabilities that climate change brings to many in the Philippines and across the Global South.
But “budget constraints, timing, and logical factors ultimately limited the scope of participation,” he said.
“A World of Water” brings together 70 esteemed artists of different disciplines, across generations, from around the world including Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, whose 2018 work reflecting on climate uncertainty, Shore Compass, will be put on display in “A World of Water” as well as American artist Josh Kline whose unsettling video installation ‘Adaptation’ envisioning New York City submerged by rising seas will be made shown as well.
“A World of Water” will look into the maritime histories of the North Sea and will include global perspectives from the Philippines and Pacific nations. “The oldest work on view dates back 485 years – 1540, and reflects humanity’s long history of mapping, navigating and attempting to control the ocean,” Paranda said.
He says the exhibit is curated “on the scale of an art biennale” and marries “centuries of oceanic knowledge, artistic and scientific innovation and urgent climate discourse.”
“Water connects us all. This exhibition is an invitation to think about our shared responsibility to protect it and to listen to the stories it holds — stories of resilience, loss and hope,” Paranada said.
“A World of Water” will run at Sainsbury Centre until August 15. Plans to put it on tour after its UK run are slowly coming together, with Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum already showing interest.
Paranda is the Filipino curator for art and climate change at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the first museum in the UK to designate a curator for art and climate.
He says curating “A World of Water” is “one of the most significant projects I have undertaken.”
— GMA Integrated News
