Wiels - EN

Ali Cherri’s Of Men and Gods and Mud, presented at WIELS, follows brickmakers working near Sudan’s Merowe Dam, bringing together mud, water and myth to reflect on labour, displacement, infrastructure and power.

These questions resonate with Hydrographies (Onomatopee, 2026), a volume dedicated to the political, ecological, and cosmological dimensions of water through visual arts and moving-image practices. The presentation brings together artists Adelita Husni Bey and Laura Huertas Millan and writer and interdisciplinary researcher Ifor Duncan for a conversation around the book’s exploration of water as a contested terrain.

If geography—etymologically, the writing of the earth—has long underpinned the spatial logics of modern geopolitics, hydrography—conventionally understood as the mapping and measurement of waterways—is reconceived here as a fluid cartography through which common desires, shared struggles, and transnational solidarities can be imagined. Across essays, conversations, and artistic contributions, Hydrographies moves through colonial infrastructures, hydropolitical regimes, submerged histories, ancestral knowledges, ecological grief, and cinematic forms of imagination. 

The presentation is convened and moderated by Silvia Franceschini, curator of the exhibition Hydrographies and an editor of the book.