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On View in Milwaukee

Name: MOWA
Address: United States

Cynthia Brinich-Langlois

Water Sheds

Past Exhibition

March 27–June 1

MOWA on the Lake 

About the Exhibition

This exhibition is open to the public at MOWA on the Lake, located inside the retirement campus of Saint John’s On The Lake in downtown Milwaukee. Learn more

In the series Water Sheds, Cynthia Brinich-Langlois explores the fraught relationship between people and the natural environment, specifically the use and misuse of water resources. She grew up on the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta in Alaska—a water-dominated landscape with rivers winding across the tundra, filling ponds and lakes.

The wet landscape is in precarious balance, however. Precipitation is minimal and any change in the water source—springtime floods of melting snow—could be ecologically damaging. Living in other regions of the United States has only intensified Brinich-Langlois’s concerns about water resources. In New Mexico, now outdated water codes were instituted in the 1800s; in Florida, droughts and groundwater contamination issues are frequent; in Iowa, intermittent flooding and drought impact agriculture; and in Wisconsin, where Brinich-Langlois now lives, water resources appear to be plentiful, but communities face serious water supply challenges due to chemical and bacterial contamination.

As the climate warms and water resources are increasingly threatened, Brinich-Langlois’s lithographs reflect the realities of this changing environment. A new topography emerges—of dry rivers and disintegrating earth—a world changed by the considerable loss of water.

Image: Little Sister
Image: Mother Cloud