Associate Professor of Art History & Theory, Melissa Ragona participated in the Santa Fe Artist Institute’s Water Rights Residency Apr 5-11, and developed the photographic / archival project “H2OH!: A Critical History of Class and Water” which examines access to clean water.
Access is not just about “drinking water,” but bathing, swimming, gardening, boating, purchasing, filtering, storing, flushing, running, and transporting, etc. This is a study of the myriad ways in which water—its access, its maintenance, its distribution—has come to demarcate rigid, though sometimes invisible lines, between classes and cohorts of people both nationally and internationally. This is a micro study of two cities: Pittsburgh and Albuquerque. A water tale, so to speak, of each — with four photo-journalistic comparative threads: pool studies, lake and river studies, bottled water studies, and land mass studies.