All Waters Belong to Water 2021 – ongoing

This research has started through an artist residency in the Verzasca Valley (Switzerland) in 2021 and 2022. 

During the residency period, the artist has walked along the Verzasca river from the gorge to where it enters in the lake Lago Maggiore (Locarno area). The path she walked (around 40 km in multiple sections) was documented through photographs, videos and drawings. In the past, water paths were the areas where civilisations were born, they were directly linked to trades and other sources of income and sustainment, but were also giving a spiritual dimension to the communities that inhabited the areas around water. The Verzasca Valley has been affected by emigration, abandonment, the rise of tourism, and the gradual repopulation and renovation of the properties. This pattern could be found in many other mountain and generally rural areas, and by researching these similarities, we understand how changes happen cyclically and how apparently different communities share similar histories. Nature doesn’t have limits or borders, but we humans, through our actions, change natural flows in order to subordinate them to our ideas and vision. 

A water gorge becomes a river, ends in the sea, evaporates, and through the rain it comes back to the same flows. All waters belong to the same water. By following the river Verzasca, we see that it flows into Lake Maggiore, which generates other rivers, for example, the river Ticino and later the river Po, which finally ends in the Adriatic Sea. The continuation of this research work consists of mapping the river flows until they reach the Adriatic Sea. Along the way, the artist documents the identity of the people and the communities, between tradition, industrialisation, and contemporary challenges, documents the changes in the landscape, the intensity of the human intervention in the shaping of this very landscape (the river flows change, the territory as well). 

The act of walking becomes a fundamental part of the project; in fact, it shouldn’t be made in any other way. 

Walking allows us to slow down, look properly, talk to people, and find out the true soul of a territory.