Wells

The planned installation of a permanent public sculpture in Chicago, a well drawing potable water in a publicly accessible location, forms the basis for this collaboration between Susan Gzesh (Director, Pozen Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago), Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Professor Art, Theory, and Practice, Northwestern University) and Abigail Winograd (MacArthur Curator, Smart Museum of Art). The latest in Manglano-Ovalle’s Well series, the sculpture will become a site for gathering, for conversation, and for reflection on water. Water is a vital and elemental resource hidden just beneath our feet, yet the process of raising it reveals a hornet’s nest of social, political, and environmental quandaries.

During the course of the Fellowship, Gray Center will serve as a platform for conversations that seek to understand the implications of the well: What is the relationship of art to science and the law? How does environmental racism manifest itself in the city and the region? How will climate change and the demand for potable water impact the Great Lakes, the states and communities that surround it? Is access to water a human right? What does it mean for something to be a “human right”?  Do people have “rights” to what those of us in water-abundant regions (like the Great Lakes) think of as the “common”? What happens to the notion of “rights” in water-scarce regions, where water has been commodified by commercial or criminal entities and sold on the market?  Does the source of water matter in these questions – who “owns” the rain, surface water like lakes, underground water in aquifers? 

The Fellows bring individual strengths and interests to bear on the development of this project. Susan’s expertise in matters pertaining to human rights and climate change as a driver of social inequality is helping to tackle the question of whether art can serve as a kind of Trojan horse in circumventing legal barriers to addressing social and environmental crises? Iñigo’s philosophical and aesthetic approach to the project continues to push Susan and Abigail beyond practical or logical considerations, always returning to questions of aesthetics and the importance of metaphor. It is, after all, his vision that drives this whole adventure forward and we are indebted to the elegant ways his brain frames these impossibly difficult queries. Abigail’s tirelessness and tenacity as both art critic and independent curator as well as her persistent unearthing of the social, the political and the environmental in contemporary art practice is the fuel behind our interdisciplinary mashup. And yet her interest in local histories and current conditions keeps the project grounded in the Midwest while Iñigo and Susan widen the lens to national and international horizons.

Link to "Genius at Work: 29 MacArthur Fellows Show Their Art in Chicago," New York Times, 7.13.21