Blue Gold

We have for a long time treated water as if it were our property, blind to the fact that it is merely a loan granted to us by nature. As water scarcity grows, becoming one of the biggest challenges ahead of us, it becomes urgent to pay attention to the invisible reality of water. This exhibition, commissioned by the main institution that manages water in Catalunya, aimed to be a space to learn about and rethink our relationship with this essential resource - from its complex management at a local level, to the common challenges at a global scale.

Framing the challenge in a personal and actionable way

The main challenge was to create an exhibition that would go beyond the scientific vision that is often given to issues related to the environment and that many times presents problems as something we can’t change, to approach water from a more personal, everyday point of view and convey that it is possible to take action individually and collectively.

That is why the exhibition began by inviting people to think about how they are connected to our most precious resource by asking the question ‘What is water for you?’ After that first intimate contact through an interactive experience, context information was displayed in space, allowing visitors to understand in a visual way the state of water today, based on scientific and technical reports.

The following rooms focused on showcasing, through didactic, emotional and participatory experiences, what’s behind opening the tap or buying a pizza and what are the most urgent challenges we are facing, in a moment in which the climate crisis continues to worsen and the population keeps growing at a fast pace. 

All this served as a prelude to an interactive installation using water as the main visual element that invited people to reflect on what is the most effective way to stop the water crisis, visualizing a collective priority list on how to take action, built by all those who attended the exhibition.