Voices of Water and Violence: Exhibition Making and the Blue Humanities for Transitional Justice

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines how the relationships between water and violence are represented as objects for public museum exhibitions in order to guarantee symbolic reparations in a transitional justice context. Using the 2018–2019 exhibition Voces para transformar a Colombia, we show that considering a non‐human element such as water in this context requires a methodological reflection about how to expand the notion of victimhood to include nature. After decades of armed conflict, the Colombian government initiated a transitional justice process which led to the creation of the Museum of Memory as a setting for post‐conflict reconciliation. This museum‐pilot exhibition approached violence and resistance in the armed conflict through three main axes: land, water, and the human body. Unlike land and the body, water has played only a marginal role in the public understanding of the armed conflict. The article analyzes the curatorial process underlying the creation of the Water axis of this exhibition. In light of this exhibition, we propose a reflection on what Nicholas Thomas calls “the museum as a method,” which involves three specific moments: discovery, captioning, and juxtaposition. We suggest a fourth moment, ramification, whereby the exhibition branches off through alliances with communities and scholars, and technologies that geographically decenter the museum. The water axis allows for a broader reflection about violence and the environment in which science and the arts come together to create citizens' engagement with justice and ecological crisis. From this perspective, the analysis of the water axis advances the burgeoning field of the blue humanities.