Patricia Tinajero
Sprouting Water is an interactive installation that provides an alternative means of filtering water. The work, which sits in the gallery courtyard, is a towering structure containing organic and recycled materials housed together by a metal frame, presenting the relationship between the natural and the industrial. The process begins through the collection of rainwater, which is gathered in a 5-gallon bucket located at the top of the structure. This primary filtering device contains metal mesh and a polyester filter that traps unwanted debris. The water then flows down through a series of tubes that connect to a grid system of recycled water bottles that have been transposed into organic water filters. This secondary filtering system consists of gravel, sand and activated carbon and nitrates. By means of gravity the water then passes through the bottles finally into two 5-gallon containers connected by tubing. Here the water has fully been processed and is ready for consumption. The purified water that has passed through the Sprouting Water system is then poured into a blue bucket that rests on a pedestal in the gallery. Visitors can drink from the water. This work is rooted in a memory Tinajero had as a young child when visiting the United States from her homeland in Ecuador. She recalls the imagery of water fountains and their presence within our environment. Once a vast public resource, the accessibility of water has become more of a privatized mode of consumption. These personal experiences as a traveler influence the themes of cultural analyses and identity politics that strongly stream within her work. The materials in Sprouting Water are found objects that are re-formed to give an alternate function. This metamorphic role of the object serves as a way to demonstrate the cultural relativity of consumption—how resources are used differently within the context of place. This is an invention that functions as a demonstration of how we may learn to provide for ourselves. It speaks of accessibility in separation from consumerism, of working with what you have, not with what you want. Tinajero’s work provides a method to make sense of her environment and reckon with personal themes of belonging. She often speaks of an “in-between” space, drawing upon her experiences of living on a borderland between her past home and present. The role of community in her work then is essential. The moment in which the viewer becomes a participant by taking in the gift of water is when the “in-between” space is temporarily disbanded. Tinajero seeks to address the part that we play as global citizens to address and resituate a structure of power by providing a natural resource for the fundamental act of community sharing. —Text by Stephanie Keichian ’09, ed. LA
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