1. Theophany
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
What might a river have to say for itself if we knew how to listen?
Theophany draws from the classical Greek term for a concept found across cultures: the manifestation of a deity through phenomena. It can also be understood as a revelation that gestures beyond itself toward a deeper understanding of the nature of all life. The title here offers a lens through which to consider what it might mean to regard the river as the powerful presence that it is, capable of real intervention in the world, both generative and destructive.
In Theophany, you are invited into conversation with the San Antonio River. The exhibition unfolds across image, sculpture, sound, and stone, asking us to reconsider the river not as backdrop, but as speaker.
A 16mm film submerged in the river returns bearing its own image (What the River Says). Interactive sculptures invite the listener to physically resonate their own body to hear long-form compositions created from hydrophone recordings, over a century of USGS river data, and breaths excerpted between speaking and singing (Bodies of Water). These breath fragments echo Yanaguana—the early name for the San Antonio River, often translated as “spirit waters”—and remind us that each exhale returns moisture to the air, folding our bodies back into the water cycle. Silk banners reveal microscopic images of microplastics in the watershed (Phainein), while limestone boulders ground us in the geology of the Edwards Aquifer (Sediment).
Moving across time and material, Theophany is a meditation on the San Antonio River as a witness, participant, and force with agency in the world. Commissioned by Contemporary at Blue Star.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.