Johab Silva: Electric Liquid

January 31 - March 29, 2025

SU Art Galleries | University Gallery in Fulton Hall

Exhibition Reception: Friday, January 31, 5-7 p.m. Fulton Hall 111

Electric Liquid, an exhibition by Johab Silva, explores the enduring power of water—its power to shape and reshape our lives, its commodification as a utility and dumping ground, and its increasing scarcity. Through large-scale projection mapping, neo-noir lighting, virtual reality, sculptural installations, and traditional painting, Silva constructs a futuristic, synthetic world that sheds light on this complex issue from multiple perspectives.

The exhibition opens with Days and Nights at the Sea, a projection documenting a durational performance in which the artist stands on the sand, back turned to the ocean. This piece highlights human vulnerability in the face of nature’s power. His projected gaze is directed toward Submerged Stories: The Last Oasis, a projection on the gallery’s back wall that reinterprets a historic flood in Canoas City, Brazil, near his home in São Paulo. This disaster gained international attention due to the striking image of a horse stranded on a rooftop, struggling to survive. Silva notes, “because media focused on the horse, the larger crisis—the flood’s devastating impact, caused by poor urban planning and city management—was overlooked. This work aims to expose how governments worldwide underestimate the power of water in urban areas, urging real, immediate solutions.”

Another featured work, The Prism and the Cycle No. 1-3, examines the commercilization of water and the reality of water scarcity. The green backgrounds reference corporate water bottle labels, highlighting how water has become a commodity. Human, Brazilian jaguar, and pink dolphin skulls symbolize the beings most affected by water shortages—an issue impacting over a billion people, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The piece also calls attention to droughts in the Brazilian Amazon and their devastating effects on rivers and wildlife. Vibrant prisms and LED lighting challenge viewers to consider these issues from multiple angles while reinforcing that all perspectives ultimately point to the same problem.

Brazilian artist and art educator Johab Silva lives and works in the Washington, D.C. metro area. He is a Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington's artist resident and founder of NEW MEDIA WORKSHOP. Silva holds a graduate degree in Arts in Education from the Corcoran College of Art & Design and an MFA from Maine College of Art & Design. His ongoing research explores themes of environmental issues, time, chance, and fabrication/consumption/collection of digital media, through lenses of a multidisciplinary practice (NFTs, VR, generative media, and performance art). His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Transformer Gallery, Santo André Museum of Art, Cody Gallery, and Kreeger Museum, and Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Portland, ME. Recent exhibitions include the NKR Neuer Kunstraum, Düsseldorf, Germany and Museum of Contemporary Art, VA, USA. Silva's works can be found in many private collections and have been reviewed in The Washington Post, BMoreArt, Sculpture Magazine, Cruzeiro do Sul Newspaper, PBS, and more.