“Fluid Kinship: Watershed, Foodscape, Human Tectonics” describes a methodology that understands watersheds as relational infrastructures, foodscapes as ecological and cultural metabolisms, and human activity as a form of geological-scale force—linking these systems across scales to reconfigure kinship as a fluid, interdependent network between humans and more-than-human environments.

Overview:

The touring exhibition Fluid Kinship: Watershed, Foodscape, Human Tectonics is preceded by a series of research initiatives developed in 2024–2025 and documented in the publication Edible Cities, Mobile Rivers by SUAVEART. Bringing together six scholars and contributors from different regions, the research explores how cultural landscapes are shaped through diverse histories, geographies, and ethnocultural contexts.

The research outcomes (six articles) will be the reading reference and presented together through a touring exhibition in 2026-2027, inviting artists and cultural practitioners to engage in archival inquiry and artistic experimentation. Together, we would like to examine how grains and historical cultures intertwine, accumulate, and transform over time, while also tracing the continuity and regeneration of riverine landscapes and traditional knowledge within contemporary local communities.

The research framework encompasses Iran, India, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Taiwan, regions that each respond in distinct ways to “rivers” and “grains,” understood both as conditions of survival and as the spiritual and cultural core of society.

Between 2026 and 2027, we envision the exhibitions will bridge the conversations with local communities and engage in dialogue with situated forms of knowledge. Through experimental and visual art, it unfolds as a dynamic exploration of food, culture, philosophy, ecology, history, economics and social systems, inviting viewers to rethink the interactions between nature and life, from seeds and fields, to rivers and ports, and onward to households and streets.

Artists and cultural practitioners are invited to respond to the exhibition’s themes through their own ways of thinking, addressing present-day challenges, lived conditions, and the possibilities of working together across territories and beyond cultural boundaries. Each work is not a static display, but an extension of research itself: evidence of the ongoing flows between individuals and society, and between human life and ecological systems.

More activities coming soon.