- The exhibition will be shown at Madrid’s Museo Lázaro Galdiano from June 2nd to August 29th
The Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid today presented the immersive and interactive exhibition "Somos Agua" (“We are Water”), created by photographer Isabel Muñoz, National Photography Award 2016 and one of the most prestigious photographers worldwide, having won two World Press Photo awards.
The exhibit, which is part of PHotoEspaña 2021 and backed by ACCIONA, presents viewers with a multisensory and immersive experience that combines the artist’s photographic quality with a bold artistic approach based on the latest audiovisual technology.
The display includes various technological elements, such as a five-meter wide screen that will be responsive to the movements of the spectators. In addition, other side screens will project lights and typical sounds of marine environments.
In the exhibit’s featured images, the photographer poetically captures the lack of social commitment to global warming by exposing one of the environments most affected by the climate emergency: the sea.
The never-before-seen images depict the movements of Japanese free diver Ai Futaki and other divers in the aquariums at Oceanogràfic de València, Spain.
The photographs capture many creatures of the seabed (jellyfish, manta rays, turtles, sharks, algae and anemones, seahorses...) while showing spectators the fragility of the marine environment, threatened by increasing pollution and the effects of global warming.
"I started this project attracted by the beauty of marine environments and also as a wake-up call to the dangers that threaten their survival. The sea gives us everything without asking for anything in return. We assume that the ocean’s abundance is infinite, that it can handle our carelessness, our lack of foresight, our excesses," says Isabel Muñoz. "What are we going to leave our children and grandchildren if we are not capable of caring for its treasures, if we continue to throw plastics into the sea that are deadly traps for the species that inhabit it, if we continue to dump waste that will put an end to marine biodiversity?"
In addition to the Isabel Muñoz exhibition, this summer the Lárazo Galdiano Museum will dedicate one of its spaces to showcasing the scarcity of fresh water in the world and the problems this causes, whlie explaining some of the actions being taken to tackle this on behalf of the corporate world. For this, ACCIONA will be exhibiting various emblematic photographs of its water treatment projects, which have made the company a world leader in reverse osmosis desalination.
The “Somos Agua” exhibit is the result of the collaboration between ACCIONA and PHotoESPAÑA, which have already carried out other joint projects to showcase some of the main challenges through art. The groups have worked together to raise awareness on climate change, through the photographic and audiovisual exhibition S.M.A.R.T, which was one of the main activities of the 2019 PHotoESPAÑA edition, and also the fight against Covid19, for which both entities collaborated to promote the #PHEdesdemibalcón contest during 2020’s 'virtual' edition.
PHotoESPAÑA is a photography festival that has been held annually in Madrid since 1998 and has since become an internationally known reference in the visual arts sector, both for the quality of the works and authors it features in its official section, as well as for the initiatives it promotes to spread the cultural and aesthetic value of photography in society.
Somos Agua - Isabel Muñoz
