AQUA FEMINA: THE FLOW OF FEMININE RURAL LIFE
An installation by Liliana Silva and Luís Costa
18 October – 17 November 2024

Lafões Cult Lab (Vouzela)
Opening: 18 October at 3 p.m.

From Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

A production by Binaural Nodar with the support of the Municipality of Vouzela

Since archaic civilisations, women have been associated with fecundity, fertility and the origin of life. These elements are often represented by aquatic symbols, which evoke transformation, purification and the very force of life. Water is thus understood as the starting point for life itself, without which nothing grows, nothing is fruitful. At the same time, water is a symbol of healing or spiritual cleansing (as in baptism, where ‘holy water’ is literally a ‘blessing’ that washes the sins away).

In rural areas, water has always been a fundamental element for the insertion of communities in certain settings: water from springs, fountains, streams, rivers, washhouses, mills, ponds, irrigation systems, thermal spas, etc. etc.

‘Aqua Femina: The flow of feminine rural life’ is a proposal of an ethnographic and multimedia installation at the Lafões Cult Lab space in Vouzela, consisting of a stream of stories that will flow through rural women’s lives in the municipality of Vouzela, in the form of a set of “scenes” that integrate sound, audiovisual elements, objects and photographs and that represent various phases of rural women’s lives, with water itself being the unifying element between the various scenes.

‘Aqua Femina: The flow of feminine rural life’ is part of the European Tramontana Network, an initiative co-funded by the Creative Europe programme and which brings together 11 partners from 7 countries, having the cultural heritage of mountain regions as a theme for multidisciplinary intervention, in the areas of ethnographic sound and audiovisual research, ethnographic and artistic education, the development of digital archives, and contemporary artistic creation and programming.

Binaural Nodar is a cultural organization supported by the Portuguese Republic – Culture | Directorate-General for the Arts.