Beloved Waters

Location: Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9  
Date: 23 May - 17 August 2025
Opening: Friday 23 May 2025 at 18:00 hrs
*During the period from 12 June to 26 June, the exhibition is open daily from 12:00 hrs to 17:00 hrs

Stroom Den Haag proudly presents the group exhibition Beloved Waters. Five artists – Amanda Piña, Ameneh Solati, Kevin Osepa, Seaweed Etcetera, Zahra Malkani– present new work that focuses on water as a living being. The participants  foreground this living element as a bearer of idiosyncratic stories, memories, conflict, and hope. Beloved Waters opens up space for a different view of water: as a site of ritual, mourning, and healing. 
 
Artists: Amanda Piña, Ameneh Solati, Kevin Osepa, Seaweed Etcetera and Zahra Malkani

The Netherlands has a long-standing tradition of water governance and management—an expertise closely tied to the nescessity to control of nature, and an approach deeply entangled with a colonial past and its associated value systems. In Beloved Waters, the artists call into question this prevailing view of water. 

Informed by diverse cultural backgrounds, the artists give voice to alternative perspectives,  forms of knowledge, and values. Drawing on stories from diasporic communities and indigenous cosmologies, they express these influences in new works created for Beloved Waters. The exhibition also features a spatial intervention by artist Johannes Equizi, who evokes associations with an ‘underwater world’ within the exhibition space. 

The artists in Beloved Waters invite visitors to reflect and dream together about new ways of living— with water, with one another, and with the earth. 

Public program
An extensive public program with guided tours, tours, and artist talks is associated with the exhibition Beloved Waters:

• 23 May, 17:00 – 18:15: Procession & Performance by Amanda Piña
  During this procession, we will walk from Amare to Stroom, where a performance will take place in the entrance area afterwards. Everyone is welcome to join.

• May 23, 18:00 – 23:00: Opening of Beloved Waters and start of HOOGTIJ#81 at Stroom

• 11 June: (postponed) Artist talk with Ameneh Solati

• 27 June: Water Imaginaries

About the program Networks of Embodiment
Beloved Waters is part of the Networks of Embodiment programme. Through exhibitions, public programmes, and educational formats, it explores alternative and speculative forms of knowledge from the perspective of marginalised voices. 

Networks of Embodiment addresses themes such as ecology and knowledge production, drawing inspiration from indigenous worldviews.  

The exhibition Beloved Waters has been made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fund.