Arario Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present group exhibition Where does the water go from September 11 to October 31. A river is never just a line on a map. Where does the water come from, what places does it pass through, and where does it join another river?

This seemingly simple path is tied to the forms of the land, to vegetation and climate, and also to human migration, production, trade, belief, and everyday life. Dams, bridges, docks, irrigation systems, and urban construction continually reshape rivers, while rivers in turn transform the lands and lives along their banks.

A place, therefore, can hardly be understood in isolation; it is always caught in relations with other places, other lives, and other times. The exhibition is not concerned with “the river” as a natural landscape, but rather with the watersheds that rivers form, and with how the people living within them relate to the land, water, infrastructure, and history.