MARE MAGNVM: PAssage

Never The Same River explores themes of bodily autonomy and human migration. The exhibition’s title draws on the famous remark attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus that “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” This idea captures the show’s meditation on change and impermanence: just as rivers flow and bodies evolve, so too do our identities, perceptions, and environments. The river becomes a metaphor for transformation, an ever-shifting current that reflects the complexity of human experience and the impossibility of returning to a fixed state.

At its core, the show considers how individuals assert agency over their own bodies in the face of cultural and systemic forces that seek to control or define them. Reflecting on the tension and trauma surrounding migration, whether by necessity or by choice, the movement of people coincides with histories of displacement, resistance, and resilience. Through photography, video, sculpture, and painting, the participating artists interrogate these narratives imposed on bodies and borders alike. Their works reveal how storytelling, whether personal or mythological, can challenge dominant ideologies and reclaim space for self-definition.

In MARE MAGNVM: Passage, an excerpt from Edison Peñafiel’s large-scale, panoramic video installation MARE MAGNVM, a stylized, monochromatic sea is populated by boats, each carrying its own collection of characters caught in a perpetual loop. Though they appear larger than life, the boats are built from found objects, including wood, oil drums, and tires, pointing to real scenes of migration across bodies of water. The work immerses viewers in the struggle of crossing borders and alerts them to a future in which rising waters will push unprecedented numbers of people away from the places they call home.

Together, the artists and their works confront illusions of the status quo with fluid, merging forms and scenes, expanding beyond disciplinary limits, while casting off frameworks projected onto both bodies and borders.