At a time of extreme weather, environmental crisis and AI’s ominous and water-devouring rise, what can we learn from those most experienced with thirst? The exhibition ‘Thirst: In Search of Freshwater’ at the Wellcome Collection in London invites us on a sensory and political journey through the global dynamics of freshwater: aridity, rain, glaciers, surface water and groundwater. An institution known for its interdisciplinary exhibitions connecting health, history and art, the Wellcome Collection here turns its attention to freshwater’s political, environmental and social dimensions.
Set against carefully lit, deep-blue walls, the exhibition weaves together historical artifacts and contemporary installations in a global exploration of water as a source of life, as well a site of conflict, vulnerability and resilience. Only 3% of the Earth’s water is freshwater, making this vital resource both a scarce necessity and inextricably tied up with power and inequality. Both living beings and landscapes thirst. This show invites us to connect with that primal longing through artworks that are both documentary and evocative of visceral, embodied experience.
The exhibition opens with ‘Thirst/Trishna’ (2025), a major new commission by Raqs Media Collective. This large-scale, multi-media work sits atop a low, sprawling plinth, combining sculptural and digital elements to evoke the architecture and mystery of the stepwell—a now mostly defunct ancient subterranean structure built across the Indian subcontinent to access and store rainwater. In the audio tour accompanying the exhibition, Raqs artist Monica Narula describes stepwells as both commonplace and awe-inspiring, their spiralling depths terrifying in scale. The installation mirrors this through shadowy, flickering visuals and a silver backdrop projecting a mosaic of skies and airplanes, suggesting the view from a pilgrimage into the depths of a well, looking up.
Embedded in the geometric metal structure are multiple video screens playing fragmented footage: a bird’s-eye view of a stepwell, sunlit stone patterns, lush forests, shards of pottery in heaps of ash and overlaid newspaper clippings painted black and covered with schematic drawings. Snippets of poetry flicker in and out, accompanied by an audio backdrop in Sanskrit, forming a mesmerizing choreography that touches on myth, folklore, climate and geopolitics.
Overwhelming at first, the work slowly coalesces into a meditation on thirst as memory: memory etched in watermarks on stone and in the lives of those historically denied access to freshwater under the South Asian caste system. In 1927, the first major public agitation against the caste system was to reclaim the right to drink from public wells—a reminder that water has long been a site of both life and resistance. Narula describes thirst as a haunting that hovers above us all, and this multilayered installation invites deep reflection on the social and spiritual symbolism of these now ghostly, forgotten structures.
