Your Holy Water is a continuation of the inquiry of the ‘Practising Water’ Project, attending to the spiritual and material relations around the source of the Blue Nile.

At Gish Abay in Ethiopia, water does not simply emerge — it is gathered. Pilgrims come to the spring with empty containers: plastic bottles, jugs, marked and personalised. Once filled with water from the source, these mundane vessels become sacred. They travel back across the land, carrying blessings, protections, and stories into domestic spaces

I first became interested in these containers during the early days of the research around the source spring. I spend as much time as possible in the immediate vicinity of the water — or in it. Gradually, my focus turns toward what contains, channels, or enables water’s movement. The notion of the container expands: the riverbed, rock formations inhabited by spirits, textiles, skin, plastic, and the human body. What holds water also holds relation

The paintings in Your Holy Water are portraits of these gathered vessels. They are landscapes densely populated with bottles and jugs, spillings and overlaps that make visible the traces of many journeys. In their transparency, they are also traces of bodies — pilgrims, spirits, water — that gather at the spring and disperse