Madrid and the water. Madrid Acuosa by Malú Cayetano

Description of project by Malú Cayetano

CentroCentro presents an exhibition on the past, present and future of Madrid and its relationship with water
 

- Madrid Acuosa shows a documentary and artistic investigation that raises the emotional reconnection of the city of Madrid with its watery past.
 
- Curated by Malú Cayetano, it focuses on the network of streams that once crossed our surroundings and gave rise to the city that was established on the banks of the Matrice stream.

- Collect traces and traces that the changing relationship of the city with water has left in infrastructures, heritage, cartographies, street maps, paintings, literature and in the collective memory

Madrid, February 11, 2021

Today opens to the public at CentroCentro, a space belonging to the Area of ​​Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Madrid City Council, the exhibition Madrid Acuosa, a documentary and artistic investigation by Malú Cayetano that raises the emotional reconnection of the city of Madrid with its past aqueous.

"Madrid means 'land rich in water', but almost nobody knows it”, “This exhibition aims to recover forgotten relationships, encourage the public to investigate their perceptions and interactions with water and hydrological processes; something especially important in a context of environmental crisis and climatic urgency such as the one we live in, in which water and its management are consolidated as a critical factor for the future development of our city. This proposal wants to make known a recent past (or not so much) in which the city maintained a relative balance with the hydrological cycle ”.

Malú Cayetano.

Madrid Acuosa is the result of Malú Cayetano's research on the extensive and unknown network of streams that once crossed our surroundings and gave rise to the city that was established on the banks of the Matrice stream. Its objective is to understand and interpret what the system they made up was like and its evolution until its almost complete disappearance and oblivion.

"It is an ongoing investigation, which is not finished and will continue to grow each time new reflections are shared, and it will evolve in the same way as the asymmetric relationship between the city and water does."

Malú Cayetano.

Madrid Acuosa collects traces and traces that this changing relationship has left in infrastructures, heritage, cartographies, street maps, literature or in the collective memory, through people who knew and lived streams, wells, water trips and springs now disappeared or nearby to do so.

The exhibition is presented in three blocks.-

- TRACES.- Paintings, cartographies, books, reports, photographs and stories that have a link with water, over time, found after consulting an extensive registry of sources of the city's natural memory. Different traces left in our city by inland seas, streams, fountains, springs, water trips, supply, canalization or sanitation projects, and even the desire for Madrid's connection with the sea.

- The LABORATORY.- A space that invites you to do your own research, to digest and internalize the shared information; play with it, touch it to understand it and appropriate it. The laboratory presents a model of the Madrid aquifer, designed and built for the sample and in which the process of filtering, collecting and conducting rainwater through different strata of sand and clay can be seen. It is a process currently blocked by the sealed city that we have built but that can be recovered for the future of Madrid.

- POSSIBLE.- The network of streams that disappeared for the first time is mapped together with the city that erased them; an exercise in recognition of its existence and its future, which depends on us.

The exhibition also presents a sound activation by the artist Susana Jiménez Carmona that proposes a series of subtle sounds that blend with the exhibition space and accompany the visitor, awakening the senses and making them sensitive to the multitude of watery sounds that run through our city. In addition, in relation to the water day, which is celebrated on March 22, a program of public activities will be carried out, among them, walks in which the city will be physically traveled looking for some of the traces and relationships shown in the exhibition.