A Gathering of Waters | Shoshana Fink

A Gathering of Waters is multi-sensory and interactive, exploring how we live with the River and how the River lives with us. Employing photography, sculpture, sound, and scent, the work is site specific, focusing on the urban watershed. Each component of the exhibition is visually and materially sourced from the River: human landscapes viewed through water, a cascade of River currents captured on silk, sound recorded beneath the water’s surface, and a scent inspired by collected river samples. In this context, the process of making is a collaboration with Wakpa Taŋka, the Great River, embracing water as a storyteller.

Stewardship is built upon an ethic of care, requiring intimacy - close looking, listening, and smelling. This work opens a door, enlarging the imagined space for the self to sense with the River. Through intimate visual, aural, and olfactory landscapes, one sees how the water sees, moves, hears, and absorbs us. Through sensual attunement, invisible ecological relationships become perceptible, ultimately revealing how we co-habit and co-evolve with each other. One can then continue this human/non-human dialogue by writing messages to the River which are later released back to her.

About the Artist:
Shoshana Fink’s practice is inter-disciplinary, focusing on photography, video, sound, scent, and installation. As world making is forged through interconnectedness, her work foregrounds processes of co-creation. In a time of uncertainty and upheaval, she sees her work as an act of care, a lens through which she can offer experiences that speak to empathy and the urgency of reimagining a shared future.

Shoshana grew up in Minneapolis, MN. For fifteen years, she worked as a Los Angeles-based film producer, returning to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2018. In 2022, Shoshana graduated with an M.F.A. in visual studies from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Since graduation, she has had numerous solo and group exhibitions and multiple residencies in the US and abroad. Since 2021, she has been an educator in both higher and elementary education as well as a member of two diverse artist-run organizations: Fotomatter Collective, a group of Minnesota-based lens and book artists, and Form + Content Gallery.

Gallery Hours:
Appointment Only