Future Flows

With artists: Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Pete Belkin, Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio, Carolina Caycedo, Patty Chang, Cheryl E. Leonard, Amor Muñoz, Lordy Rodriguez, Debra Scacco, Studio for Urban Projects, and Su Yu Hsin.

Curated by Devon Bella and Jodi Roberts.
April 19 – July 6, 2025

Future Flows brings together artists who explore water as both subject and object, tracing its currents through environmental, social, and technological systems. From intimate acts of observation to large-scale interventions, the works in this exhibition reveal water as a site of deep interconnection, memory, conflict, and transformation.

Set against the backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Estuary — one of the most altered estuarine ecosystems in the world and a critical node in global water systems — Future Flows invites us to attune ourselves to the dynamic ways water moves: through rivers and watersheds, across industries and infrastructures, through memory and myth. Some works make water visible in unexpected ways: as a hidden language deciphered through sound, as ghostly traces of erased waterways and submerged ecologies, or as reshaped environments where water and land converge to create resilient, adaptive spaces. Others examine the politics of access and scarcity, from semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan to hydroelectric development in Colombia.

Interwoven throughout the exhibition is a commitment to embodied listening — to the voices of water protectors and scientists, to the rhythms of tides and storm surges, and to the stories water carries. The following descriptions serve as a guide to each artwork and artist, while public programming invites deeper engagement with the themes explored in the show.

Future Flows is both a meditation and a call to action, urging us to recognize that water connects us all. What does it mean to be in relation with water? How do we learn from it, protect it, and imagine new ways of coexisting with it? Future Flows asks us to listen deeply — not just as observers, but as active participants in the urgent conversation about water’s future.