“For Our Time Is the Time of Water” at TAVROS: Water as a fundamental condition of life, memory and politics

In an era of extreme floods, prolonged droughts, the “silent crisis” of the seas, and escalating conflicts over natural resources, the exhibition “For Our Time Is the Time of Water” at TAVROS turns its focus to water as a fundamental condition of life, memory, and politics.

Through works by international artists, the exhibition explores how water alternately disappears and overflows; how it is controlled, privatized, or destroyed; and how it remains a carrier of knowledge, resistance, and collective responsibility. Water does not appear here as a natural given, but as a common good in crisis – and as an urgent invitation to reconsider our relationship with it.

Rather than proposing definitive answers, the exhibition poses a crucial question: Who does water belong to? How can we rethink our collective responsibility toward the water systems that sustain life before they become permanently invisible?

In a time when floods, droughts, and rising sea levels have become everyday realities, “For Our Time Is the Time of Water” at TAVROS foregrounds water as a matter of life, politics, and shared responsibility. Bringing together works by international artists and research collectives, the exhibition examines bodies of water as common goods in crisis: resources that sometimes dry up and sometimes overflow; that are regulated, instrumentalized, and privatized – yet continue to carry memory, knowledge, and resistance.

The hydrological cycle – water, rain, evaporation, and natural water systems such as rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans – along with drought and desertification, are all interconnected. They remind us that we live within an “Ocean of Wetness” (a term borrowed from landscape architect Dilip da Cunha), where what happens in one place affects everything else – from cities to the sea and beyond. This complex system of balances is now clearly out of control.

From Athens and the Attic coastline to Central Asia, Iraq, and the Indus Delta, the works in the exhibition map the consequences of human interventions in water systems – river diversions, drainage, infrastructure, and extractivism – and their impact on communities and landscapes. At the same time, the exhibition suggests alternative ways of thinking about our relationship with water: not as something to be controlled, but as something we coexist with.

In “Taming Waters and Women” (2024), the DAVRA research collective (Saodat Ismailova, Madina Joldybek, Zumrad Mirzalieva) revisits the period of Soviet hegemony in Central Asia, linking water control to resource extraction and women’s labor.

With the sculptural work Water-Arm Series (2019), Jumana Manna uses ceramic elements reminiscent of fragmented irrigation systems, commenting on failed infrastructures and regimes of water control.

In the film Chibayish (2022), Alia Farid focuses on the marshlands of southern Iraq, documenting the everyday lives of communities experiencing the effects of state intervention, war, and climate change.

Shahana Rajani’s Four Acts of Recovery (2025) engages with communities in the Indus Delta, inviting audiences into a process of memory retrieval and imaginative reconnection with lost waterscapes.

Daphne Lianantoni’s walking-based practice (Beyond the Mountain, 2023–26) centers on rivers and mountains around Athens, highlighting the coexistence of human and aquatic ecosystems.

In Stranded (2021), Rossella Biscotti presents glass forms shaped by time and tides, approaching the coastline as a fragile archive of environmental and industrial memory.

The exhibition concludes with Ayesha Hameed’s cinematic letter Ilemuria (2023), a poetic reflection on water as both existential and collective condition.

Also presented within the framework of the exhibition is Eleni Papaskyriani’s illustrated map Athens – Water City, which renders visible the city’s hidden water networks and addresses children and families alike.

Meanwhile, Horizon (2026) by Navine G. Dossos transfers the image of the sea horizon onto fabrics and work garments, linking water to everyday life and expanding art beyond the exhibition space.

“For Our Time Is the Time of Water” invites audiences to rethink their relationship with water, posing a simple yet critical question: How can we live with it, rather than against it?

Public Programme

As part of the exhibition, a public programme of guided tours and events will take place:

Saturday, March 28, 2026, 09:00–11:00 | Walk
From the Top of the Mountain You Can See the Sea
Led by Daphne Lianantoni

Wednesday, April 29, 2026, 20:00 | Performance
We Are in Flood
Artists: Ayesha Hameed & Sofia Zafeiriou
Note: The date of this event will be confirmed shortly.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026, 20:00 | Performance
The Choir for Non-musicians
Artist: Dina Amro

Note: Additional events will be announced soon as part of the public programme.

Contributors’ Biographies

Rossella Biscotti (b. 1978, Molfetta, Italy) lives and works between Brussels and Rotterdam. In her multimedia practice, spanning film, performance, and sculpture, she uses montage to foreground individual narratives and their relationship to society. She reconstructs recent socio-political moments through subjective experiences, creating unofficial histories at the margins of dominant discourse. Often weaving together conflicting testimonies into new visual narratives, she connects past and present. She studied in Naples and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and has participated in major international exhibitions such as documenta 13 and the Venice Biennale. She has received significant international contemporary art awards.

Alia Farid (b. 1985) lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico. She graduated from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico and holds an MSc from MIT and an MA from MACBA in Barcelona. In 2023 she received the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award and was a David and Roberta Logie Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (2023–24). She has presented solo exhibitions at major institutions including Kunsthalle Basel, Portikus, Chisenhale Gallery, and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and has participated in international exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Gwangju Biennale.

Ayesha Hameed (London, UK) explores the legacies of indentureship and slavery through the forms of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Her Afrofuturist approach combines performance, audio essays, video, lectures, and poetry. She teaches in the MFA in Art program at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is Professor of Artistic Research at Uniarts Helsinki. She was a Research Fellow at the Kone Foundation (2022–2026) and recently served as Artist in Residence at Camden Arts Centre.

Daphne Lianantoni was born in Athens and grew up in Agia Paraskevi. She studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1986. That same year she established the Children’s Art Workshop at the Municipality of Agia Paraskevi, which she directed until 2001. To this day, a central axis of her practice concerns the understanding and framing of children’s creativity. Her personal work focuses on exploring and articulating her relationship with landscape geography (Legrena 2008; Chalandri Ravine 2014–2024; Kimolos 2016–2017; Erasinos River 2022–2025; Mesogeia from 2023 to present).

Jumana Manna (b. 1987) is a Palestinian visual artist and filmmaker living and working between Jerusalem and Berlin. Her work examines how power is inscribed onto the body, land, and material in relation to colonial legacies and histories of place. Through sculpture and film, she investigates the paradoxes of preservation in architecture, agriculture, and law, highlighting tensions between modernist classification and living processes of decay and regeneration. She has held solo exhibitions at institutions including MoMA PS1 (New York), Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), Kunsthall Stavanger, Matadero (Madrid), M HKA (Antwerp), and Malmö Kunsthall, and has participated in international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Manifesta 14, and the Liverpool Biennial. In 2025 she completed the public artwork Sebastia for the new Oslo Government Quarter, designed for the open “city floor” at Johann Nygaardsvoll plass, one of Norway’s largest public art spaces. Her work is included in major collections such as MoMA and the Whitney Museum.

Shahana Rajani is an artist whose practice investigates visual cultures, landscapes, and infrastructures of “development,” militarization, and ecological resistance in Pakistan. Her work centers on community-based and collaborative research. Through moving image, installation, and print, she activates counter-histories, genealogies, and alternative practices of representation and relation. She is co-founder (with Zahra Malkani) of Karachi LaJamia, an experimental project focused on eco-pedagogical approaches to land and water struggles in Karachi. She lives and works in Tkaronto (Canada). Recently she presented the exhibition Lines That World a River at Nottingham Contemporary (February 7 – May 10, 2026), in collaboration with Ustad Abdul Aziz, Abdul Sattar, and Aziza Ahmad.

DAVRA Research Collective was founded in 2021 with the mission of connecting and developing the artistic scene of Central Asia, prioritizing dynamic knowledge exchange within the region. It focuses on studying and redefining contemporary Central Asia through public programs, research, commissions, and other initiatives. DAVRA presented a public program within Saodat Ismailova’s participation in documenta fifteen and published the book Chilltans, highlighting contemporary voices from Central Asia. It has produced two essay films, Tashkent: 58–88 by Zumrad Mirzalieva and Whose Voice Is It? by Dana Iskakova. The collective installation Taming Waters and Women of Soviet Central Asia was presented at the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague (2024), later at the Lahore Biennale, and elsewhere. DAVRA has curated film programs at institutions including Eye Film Museum, Centre Pompidou, and GoEast Film Festival. It places strong emphasis on educational programs and workshops in Central Asia and is currently focusing on water-related issues through research, publications, workshops, and new commissions.

Maria-Thalia Karras is a curator, director of TAVROS space, and writer based in Athens. She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute. In 2005 she co-founded the nonprofit organization locus athens, which has realized over 50 exhibitions and public projects, emphasizing new productions in urban space. In 2019 she founded TAVROS, developing international collaborations and programs with social and political orientations. In 2023 she curated the main exhibition of the 8th Thessaloniki Biennale (Being as Communion). Her work focuses on the politics of public space, ecology, and cross-disciplinary artistic collaborations.

Mayssa Fattouh is an independent curator, artist, and writer based in Barcelona. She has collaborated with numerous institutions across Europe and the Middle East in both public and private sectors, initiating and developing projects focused on urgent environmental and social issues. She is co-founder of the public art organization TandemWorks and the improvisational music platform Pristine Folds. In her most recent position, she served as Director of Ab-Anbar Gallery in London.