Four Rivers

Politics of Water
Photo & Film Exhibition

Curated by Azura Silberschmidt and Valeria Leiva

In times shaped by global capitalist crises, war and environmental destruction, politics remains at the heart of decision~making. Yet these decisions rarely account for the full complexity of the world we inhabit. Rivers, forests, mountains and countless more-than~human lives are left out of the political imagination, even though their futures are inseparable from our own. Four Rivers brings together the stories of the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Atrato River in Colombia, the Cahabón River in Guatemala and the Rhine River in Switzerland. Each of these rivers flows through distinct territories, carrying with them memories, struggles, conflicts and ancestral knowledge. In different ways, these waters have witnessed and been affected by extractivism, militarisation, displacement and resistance. Some of them, like the Whanganui and the Atrato River, have even beenmlegally recognised as living beings with rights. These cases challenge the dominant political paradigm and open space for imagining new forms of governance, ones that listen to, respect and coexist with more~than~human life. This exhibition approaches water as a living territory, as a political body, as memory and as a future in itself. The rivers presented here are not just metaphors or landscapes; they are vital actors in a planetary emergency. They remind us that we are not alone in this world and that our choices, or our indifferences ripple far beyond the human realm. Four Rivers is an invitation to rethink politics through an ethics of interdependence, toward an interspecially aware future.

With friendly support from

Works from
Ana Karina Delgado 
Conor Clarke 
Regina José Galindo 
Ixqcrear Collective 
Maíz de Vida 

3.-4. September 2025, 17h-20h
Studiokino and CIVIC
Academy of Art and Design
Freilager-Platz 1, Basel