Rethinking water with artists and museums: Talk and Exhibition

Sara Ahmed, founder of the Living Water Museum and coordinator of Aquamuse, will give a talk on Liquid heritage at IHE Delft. Artist in Residence Roger Anis opens his exhibition Bride of the Nile.

Contemporary water challenges suggest the need for a new paradigm of water management and governance, which requires rethinking what water ‘is’ and what water ‘means’ for all users, especially those at the margins. Water museums exhibit and interpret an outstanding liquid heritage, tangible and intangible, from ancient artifacts and technologies to strategies to combat water scarcity, pollution and climate change. While museums are repositories of our fluid past, they also play a role in reconnecting people with water in all its dimensions, particularly from a contextual lens embedded in culture, power and practice. In this talk, Sara Ahmed, Founder-Director, The Living Waters Museum, will talk about the need to decolonise museums, drawing on the Aquamuse project supported by the Water and Development Partnership Program at IHE Delft.

Sara Ahmed is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK and more than 30 years of research and practice experience on water, gender and governance issues in India and South Asia.

Artist in residence Roger Anis joins IHE Delft in October as part of the Water and Development Partnership Programme Aquamuse. He collaborated in the past with #EverydayNile led by IHE Delft's Emanuele Fantini. The exhibition features photos from his Photography and Society MSc graduation project from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.“Our ancestors revered natural elements like the sun, water, and earth as divine, recognizing their vital connection to life. Today, the Nile, shared by eleven African nations, faces environmental and geopolitical issues, including plastic pollution.

Nowadays, the Nile, one of the longest rivers in the world, is shared by eleven African countries and faces numerous environmental and geopolitical challenges. It is also one of the top 10 rivers contributing to the plastic waste in the ocean.

In "Where is the Bride of the Nile," Anis goes in search for a modern-day Bride of the Nile and the contemporary rituals that could emerge from this ancient myth that is tightly linked to the river.

What would the Bride of the Nile look like now? Can this new myth bring back reverence for the river, a source of life for millions?

Roger Anis is an Egyptian Documentary photographer, Photo editor & Curator. He received his bachelor in fine arts in 2008 from Egypt and started his career as a photojournalist in 2010. In 2015 he received a degree in photojournalism from the Danish School of Media & Journalism in Denmark. In 2024, he received his master’s at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands, focusing on water and rivers. His work and photo stories focus on trying to shed light on important subjects and social issues in our communities.He is also Artistic Director and Co-founder of EverydayNile project.

Read more in the virtual essay by Fantini.

14:30 - Liquid Heritage: Reimagining Hydro-technologies, Building Inclusive Water Futures
talk by Sara Ahmed - B1 auditorium
16:00 - Opening of Where is the bride of the Nile
photo exhibition by Roger Anis - in front of A1 auditorium