Water, Mud and Capital places us before the open wound running through the earth’s rivers and riverbeds. Àlvar Calvet examines how the system has transformed the primordial element of life into a speculative commodity. The exhibition arrives in Galicia at a critical moment, linking the threat of the Altri plant with other water-related scars in the artist’s career —from the Ebro to the Riudecanyes reservoir, and from the Arga to Italy’s Aniene— presenting water as a space where economy, politics and ecology collide.

Understanding sediment as the river’s physical memory, Calvet brings this material into the exhibition space. Traditional forms become tools for contemporary reflection: the thirty coins modelled with sediment from the Ulla symbolise betrayal and the commodification of natural resources.

The installation unfolds as a material liturgy: banners, columns of clay pitchers and primordial symbols such as bread and water interact with the religious architecture that hosts the exhibition. Through these humble materials, the artist invites an active listening of the environment. Water, Mud and Capital reminds us that the exploitation of water resources betrays our own nature. In Galicia, this wound is not an abstraction: it is present, territory and conflict. Here, art becomes a powerful catalyst —even when it takes the form of a handful of wounded clay.