If You Think You Can Grasp Me,
Think Again
Anticipating the final days of the Belgrade iteration of The Other Side of Water (16th-19th May), the last Chapter, “The Other Side of Water: Remnants of Hope”, overflows Podroom from 12th to 14th of May with work which looks into the impact of the current climate crisis on the world’s seas and rivers and the role of water resources in shaping the near future.
Diana Barquero Pérez’s If You Think You Can Grasp Me, Think Again, will look at the transformations of the Térraba Sierpe National Wetland, a protected wetland in the southern area of Costa Rica currently manipulated through a purely extractive lens without considering the ensuing complexity of the social and environmental consequences. Marijana Radović’s Gentle Cleanser focuses on the Mediterranean Sea, where millions of small replicas of jewels and silks are shipped every second from East to West in large containers leaving behind a toxic trail. Her sculptures are made from those plastic replicas, purchased in small shops around the Mediterranean basin. Ivan Marković’s video series portrays the absurdities in the way humans have used, destroyed and attempted to recreate nature in their pursuit for comfort and pleasure. Škart Group’s banner-like chants use wordplay and visual language to celebrate water as both a means and a subject of contention and struggle.
These residues of human interaction with its environment which have tainted and forever changed the world’s waters is what consumes the gallery space during these three days.
If You Think You Can Grasp Me, Think Again is on display in Podroom Gallery 14th-16th April and 12th-19th May.
“If You Think You Can Grasp Me, Think Again is a project that deals with the transformations on a wetland area located in Costa Rica.
This wetland is a protected area of great environmental importance However, this place is being shrunk and transformed by multiple external aggressions. Banana, palm oil, rice and pineapple ar expanding the agricultural border filling the land and the water with pesticides, fertilizers and polluted sediments.
Changes in land use, struggles for land rights, workers, and the traces of pesticides are inscribed in the wetland. They are present in the different materialities and creatures that mutate, adapt, and
decompose in the aquatic landscape. My artistic procedure seeks to read these hidden alphabets in the layers of sediment, water and chemicals; these alphabets that, through their traces, show the slow but progressive violence that is exerted onto the land and the water.”
This wetland is a protected area of great environmental importance However, this place is being shrunk and transformed by multiple external aggressions. Banana, palm oil, rice and pineapple ar expanding the agricultural border filling the land and the water with pesticides, fertilizers and polluted sediments.
Changes in land use, struggles for land rights, workers, and the traces of pesticides are inscribed in the wetland. They are present in the different materialities and creatures that mutate, adapt, and
decompose in the aquatic landscape. My artistic procedure seeks to read these hidden alphabets in the layers of sediment, water and chemicals; these alphabets that, through their traces, show the slow but progressive violence that is exerted onto the land and the water.”