A new Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts exhibition is highlighting how water shapes cultural geographies and artistic practice, featuring artists from Florida and all over the world.
"Water Ways: Indigenous Ecologies and Florida Heritage" is hosted in collaboration with the FSU Native American and Indigenous Studies Center (NAIS), the Department of Religion and the Council on Research and Creativity. The exhibition, which opens Sept. 18, with a reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m., includes a slate of programming to be held now through its closing March 14.
The title plays on the dual meaning of "ways," exploring both the physical paths and routes shaped by water as well as the ways - or various methods and practices - through which Indigenous communities express their relationships with water.
"The exhibition highlights how Florida's Indigenous material heritage embodies ways of living with water and relates these practices to parallel traditions across the Americas and Asia," said Elizabeth A. Cecil, Timothy Gannon Associate Professor of Religion and the exhibition's curator. "Water Ways also invites reflection on pressing environmental issues, including water access, ecological change and climate resilience, by highlighting how communities have long understood and responded to the challenges of living with water."
Water Ways is free and open to the public. In addition to hosting events such as a symposium and a book club, the exhibit will display historical artifacts from regional collections and art from MoFA's permanent holdings. Pieces by three contemporary artists whose work touches on themes of Indigeneity, water and heritage will also be featured.
"One piece we're debuting is by Harold García V (El Quinto), a Cuban-born, New York-based artist," Cecil said. "'Melaza Lake' is an installation painted with molasses that overlays an image of a Domino Sugar refinery on a Seminole patchwork design. In the work, arrows pierce the wall and molasses drips, pointing to the sugar industry's destructive impact on the Everglades."
Water Ways also displays work by Samboleap Tol, an artist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who is part of the Khmer diaspora - people of Khmer ethnicity living outside of their ancestral homeland of Cambodia. Tol utilizes Buddhist rituals to process generational trauma and ecological vulnerability through performance and participatory installations.
Wilson Bowers, another featured artist and member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, reimagines tribal patchwork designs across varied media, like murals and skateboards, to sustain Indigenous heritage.
"We are also honored to display two ancient cypress dugout canoes on loan from the Florida Division of Historical Research," said Kaylee Spencer, MoFA director and Department of Art Education professor. "One canoe, recovered from Manatee Springs, anchors the exhibition in a site of more than 9,000 years of continuous human habitation. These remarkable canoes preserve Indigenous knowledge and practices of water that continue into the present."
In addition, the exhibition includes waterbird-decorated ceramics, tools made from shark teeth and shells, paintings, a bronze breastplate and a mask used in Bhūta Kola, a form of spirit worship. This mask of the boar-deity Panjurli, on loan from the New Orleans Museum of Art, is used in ceremonies in which a dancer embodies the spirit to address community concerns tied to land and water.
"Water is not only a resource but also a relationship," Cecil said. "I hope visitors see Florida's springs, rivers, and wetlands as living partners within longer Indigenous ecologies and also recognize how commodification and extractive economies have reshaped those relations."
Public events are scheduled throughout the exhibition's run to showcase the art pieces and open conversations about hydrology and heritage, including a book club series with FSU Sustainable Campus and a panel discussion considering Tallahassee's water-related issues with speakers from other local organizations. MoFA will host artist talks by Bowers and García starting on Nov. 13. Artist Tol will perform at the closing reception, scheduled for Feb. 26. The "Futures of Water" symposium, jointly organized with NAIS and featuring a cohort of invited speakers alongside FSU faculty, will take place in late February.
To plan a visit and learn more about the exhibition and other upcoming museum events, visit mofa.fsu.edu.
