Histories and lives embedded in the land – and particularly the waterways that have alternately built and destroyed Houston over time – will be the subject of a newly commissioned, multi-disciplinary work by Mexican artist Tania Candiani. In her past work, Candiani has worked across a spectrum of media and practices to explore the intersections between people, place, labor and industry. In so doing, Candiani initiates explorations and collaborations that convene communal meditations on the past via music, architecture, and craft, with an emphasis on early technologies and vernacular practices of record-keeping. Her work in Houston will be developed out of an intermittent eight-month residency generously sponsored and supported by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. A portion of this project was created in the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern in collaboration with Buffalo Bayou Partnership.

We are grateful as well for the work of SubSuelo productions for their expert work in producing the video, and Input/Output for contributing important projection mapping. We also wish to thank Christian Kelleher and UH Special Collections for their assistance in lending and locating archival materials for Lifeblood.

This exhibition is dedicated to the life and memory of Vinod Hopson (1975-2023) who inspired us to think about history more thoroughly, radically, and vividly.