Meeting of Waters was born out of a young artist who had been obsessed with water since childhood; the immense grief she felt due to the state of water on Earth had driven her to devote her life to advocating and protecting this precious element.
Charlotte Qin, a Chinese-Canadian artist living in Switzerland started using her art as a vehicle to advocate for water at her first solo exhibition in Geneva on July 27th, 2021. On October 1st 2021, the initial form of MoW (named “World of Water” at the time) was awarded the Water Challenge Award by the Swiss Water Partnership. Since then, a community of volunteers and water enthusiasts has emerged around the art studio of Charlotte: a confluence of professionals from science, policy, culture, and art who passionately care about water.
Our Mission
Our mission is to elevate the cultural value of water through artivism and to inform and educate the public about water-related issues with our participatory methods and reciprocal performances.
Our Vision
We hope to revitalise the relationship between humanity and water to one that is based on love and care. To achieve this vision, we need people from all sectors to stand with us and bring art and culture to the frontline of the work of perserving our waters worldwide.
The crisis in water and water-related issues, resulting from environmental deterioration, governance mismanagement, and political weaponisation of certain water infrastructures, has been considered one of the root causes of climate change and humanitarian crises that modern societies are facing today. However, the urgency of water issues is not yet fully integrated into the common consciousness of every civilian. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject by nature. But more evidence shows that we reached this situation as a consequence of the separation and lack of synergy between science, art, and policy communities, who act quite independently. Although numerous examples demonstrate that the well-being and prosperity of society are interconnected with water, some other equally significant aspects of water issues, such as culture, emotion, faith, religion, etc., are often set aside or even ignored in the discourse on water issues.
Switzerland is known as the water tower of the Alps, with 4% of its surface area covered by water, countless rivers, and lakes. What makes Switzerland stand out from the rest of the world is that most of these water reservoirs are well-integrated with the cities and clean enough for people to swim in. The scenery of the architecture integrated with the waters has made Switzerland a world-renowned destination for tourists. Moreover, Switzerland acts as a responsible guardian of this precious resource through its water management and wastewater treatment. Notably, 60% of the electricity generated in Switzerland comes from hydropower, and the lakes are also used to cool down infrastructures in replacement of air conditioning in the summer.
Meanwhile, the city of Geneva, the home of “Jet d’eau,” carries a history of peace-making and humanitarianism since the last century. The foundation of inter-governmental organisations such as the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has taken the Swiss values of “neutrality” to the international stage. Today, water and sanitation (SDG6, or the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6) is recognized as the foundation of sustainable development. It is also recognised as a significant building block of humanitarian aid –– with the “Geneva List of Principles on the Protection of Water Infrastructure” made available by Geneva Water Hub as the reference book for justice and humanitarianism during armed conflicts. The art and cultural organisation like MoW hopes to bring the image of Geneva to the next level: the “City of Water.”