Cloud Catchers, by Ingrid Hora
Cloud Catchers, a solo exhibition by Ingrid Hora
Curated by Emanuele Guidi in collaboration with BAR project
Opening October 23rd, 7 pm.
HAUS – Space for Art and Contemporary Practices
Carrer Ciutat de Granada 34–36, Barcelona.
“Two and a half thousand years ago, a man ordered the sea to be flogged”. So opens the tale, told in a woman’s voice, in Cloud Catchers. The story unfolds as a tapestry of ancient myths recounting humanity’s precarious relationship with water – from violent floods to enduring droughts, often personified by female figures. Interwoven with these legends are fragments of conversations with scientists, researchers, and climate psychologists, carrying into the present the ongoing struggle to find the words and narratives to voice the water crisis and its inequalities.
Ingrid Hora’s research emerges from an imaginary prompted by fog fences, a soft water-collection technology recently developed and currently tested in various regions of the world – among them Barcelona and the Anti-Atlas Mountains in Morocco. The research materialised in a three-channel video installation, modelled after this technology and augmented with sculptural interventions that expand Hora’s work on the materials, shapes, and imagery of vessels used to condense and contain water. Dragon trees, ocarina instruments, and vases of various forms speak of continuity and communication across bodies.
The highly choreographed moving images, filmed by the artist across the Mediterranean Sea, follow the pace dictated by the relentless flow of found footage collected on social media and scientific platforms. Moving from humanity’s ancestral endeavours to master water — spanning oceans, mountains, and the skies above — Cloud Catchers seeks to grasp a collective, anxious, and extreme present, sketching the outline of a plot that can only be a choral one.
Ingrid Hora’s Cloud Catchers has been made possible thanks to the following people, their expertise and their work: interviews were conducted with climate researcher Elena Mains (Eurac Research); cinematography and editing by Daniel Mazza; script developed in collaboration with Tod Wodicka; choreography by Gizem Aksu, Jan Burkhardt, Roger Sala Reyne, Laurie Young, Sigal Zouk; sculptures and installation with the support of Daniel Salomon.
Cloud Catchers is promoted by BAR project in collaboration with Hangar (Barcelona) and Eurac Research (Bozen/Bolzano), with a cultural partnership with the Dar Bellarj Foundation (Marrakech). Upon completion, the project will join the collection of the MACTE Foundation (Termoli).
The project by Italian artist Ingrid Hora is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of under the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.
Supported by:
