Fluid Kinships: Curating Impermanent Water Rituals
Publication information:
Abstract
This presentation reflects on a curatorial practice that engages water as material, spiritual, and relational agent through two interconnected projects: Water Meditations (Somerville Museum, 2022–2023) and Evaporate: Performance Art from Boston and Bergen (Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, 2023). Through guided meditation, ritual, and site-responsive performance, these projects explore impermanence as an ethical framework for belonging. Centering water as an active interlocutor rather than metaphor or resource, the work foregrounds embodied, more-than-human participation. Evaporation becomes a key conceptual lens, framing belonging as provisional, porous, and continually renegotiated through attentiveness, care, and listening.
Presenter Biography
Arlinda Shtuni is an artist, writer and curator. Her work contemplates our connection with the living world through tuning our senses to our environment and creating a receptive state in which to consider our collective future. Her work has been shown across galleries, museums and cultural institutions and supported by the National Endowment for Humanities, Mass Humanities, Mass Cultural Council.