Thousands have lived without love, Auden reminds us, but not a single one without water. Surely, by the third millennium, clean water should be an inalienable right of everyone. But ours is an imperfect world. Some of us are born lucky and enjoy water as a natural resource, as abundant and accessible as air, but this is an exception to the rule, geographically and historically speaking. Water is like money: it’s only when you don’t have it that you realize how much you need it.
How can one exhibition comprehensively cover such a large topic? Water is a medical necessity, a scientific miracle, a source of spiritual and artistic reverence. “Thirst: In Search of Freshwater,” a major exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, attempts to capture freshwater through a number of lenses—artistic, scientific, sociological and historical. “Thirst” spotlights how reliant we are on water, not just biologically but culturally too. There is so much packed into “Thirst” that it could easily feel overwhelming, but this capacious show is neatly divided into subsections (aridity, rain, glaciers, surface water and groundwater), helping viewers flow through the assorted materials. The result is a stunningly impressive show.
Curator Janice Li must be praised for bringing together so many objects, themes and ideas under the single banner of freshwater. There is a stunning range of materials on display: photographs, films, artifacts, audio, tapestries and V.R. All are used to tell a story of water or its absence. We see photographs of drought and videos of floods. The exhibition is interested in the practices of the past, the inequities of the present and the turbulence of the future.
A key theme of “Thirst” is how water has been mismanaged through the years, whether by colonial powers or today by those industries driving the climate crisis. Some of the displays are conventional museum pieces—for instance, maps depicting the destruction of Iraq’s marshes, which were drained by Saddam Hussein to make way for oil development. But most of the exhibition’s pieces are less diagrammatic. Mineral Lick, for example, is a sculpture by Lebanese artist Dala Masser, assembling different textures together to highlight Lebanon’s neglected public water infrastructure. The artist calls her sculpture a “hydromap of Beirut.”
“Thirst” excels in its care to cover not only a diversity of materials but also a diversity of viewpoints, eschewing any naïve Western notion of water as a universal right and instead seeing water in its proper context—that is, a commodity that is owned, managed and mismanaged by the powerful. In doing so, “Thirst” doesn’t ignore the politics of water but rather dives right in. The show is much richer as a result.
There are some brilliant photographs throughout “Thirst” that emphasize the politics of water. Early on in the exhibition, we see images from Before It’s Gone, M’hammed Kilito’s ongoing photographic project on oasis degradation in Morocco, a country that has been in drought since 2018. We are reminded that drought is as much a human experience as a natural phenomenon. But there is a photograph elsewhere in “Thirst” that is probably the most moving moment in the entire exhibition.
Ein Aouja is an image by Palestinian-American artist Adam Rouhana, showing a group of men enjoying the water in the West Bank. Even in 2022, when the image was taken, the scene was tinged with violence (Rouhana and the bathers were under surveillance by Israeli authorities), but the joy in the men’s faces has taken on a tragic meaning in the few short years since then. Restricting access to water is one of the simplest ways an occupying force can control a weaker population. The inclusion of Rouhana’s buoyant photograph showing Palestinian joy helps to elevate the politics of “Thirst” beyond a binary discussion of water being either accessible or not. Instead, Rouhana’s photograph helps situate viewers in a more complex social context, one in which water represents a right to happiness, not just survival. It’s impossible to look at the freedom captured in Ein Aouja—as violence in Gaza and the West Bank reaches unprecedented levels—and not lament that water is still being used as a weapon by the strong against the weak.
Some photographs are more pleasing. Particularly lovely for British viewers will be Chloe Dewe Matthews’s series of photographs Thames Log, showing different religious and spiritual groups using the Thames River in London as a site of spiritual practice, from African Pentecostal baptism to Pagan rituals. There are several wonderful installations that are more conceptual than documentary. Why has water been so important to artists across cultures throughout the centuries? D. H. Lawrence wrote about this ineffable quality when he described water as being “hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water, and nobody knows what it is.”
Water scarcity will increasingly be a feature of our fractious world. Water shortages are already exacerbating and fueling armed conflict. This will surely only increase as the climate crisis worsens. There are beautiful moments in the show, but “Thirst” at times feels like an uncomfortable augury of our water-scarce future. But if the exhibition argues anything, it’s that we should listen to alternative perspectives and knowledge systems, renouncing thinking that sees water as a commodity to be controlled. A note on the wall tells viewers that “the regenerative power of water offers hope as we have the current climate crisis. We can learn from its cyclical, healing nature, as well as from communities, past and present, who create abundance out of scarcity.” “Thirst” emphasizes the cyclical nature of water, returning to it over and over again in the exhibition. Perhaps that’s what Hermann Hesse meant when he described water as “the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Being.”
“Thirst: In Search of Freshwater” is on view at The Wellcome Collection through February 1, 2026.
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