The Water That Connects Us
Monte Vista Projects + SCOTTY + uniōn
Visit Us
Address
Bendix Building
1206 Maple Ave, #523
Los Angeles
Opening
Sat, Oct 31, 7-10 pm
On view
Oct 31 - Nov 22, 2026
Sat & Sun 1-5 pm and by appointment
Contact
infomvpmail (at ) gmail.com
Participating artists
Christine Atkinson (US), Charlotte Bastian (DE), Kiyomi Fukui Nannery (US), Sara Hassan Khani(US), Julia Krewani (DE), José C. Lepov (MX) Judi Pettite, (US), Daniel Tovar (US), Bettina Weiss (DE), Juliane Zelwies (DE)
Image
Juliane Zelwies "north south southbound"
About
The ocean is a symbolic place: in opposition to the security and stability of land, it represents instability, wildness, formlessness, and freedom.
The ten artists in The Water That Connects Us consider the ocean as a space that both metaphorically and literally resists the fixity of borders and systems, while also revealing how deeply we desire these structures of control. The works find oceanic currents within the body, the drifting form of a plastic bag, the migration of Arctic terns, and the movement of nomadic peoples. It is a living space that connects distant bodies, indifferent to the political and economic structures that seem intent on controlling or even dividing us. In this light, maps, flags, nets, geometric forms, and communication networks appear as attempts to impose order on what is fluid and wild.
In Los Angeles—where the Pacific meets the highway, migration routes, digital infrastructures, and urban expansion— this exhibition asks whether freedom can exist without loss of control. If we are always trying to regulate the movement of water, bodies, people, information, and desire, do we really want to be free?
Monte Vista Projects
Monte Vista Projects is a Los Angeles based artist-run collective established in 2007. Through exhibitions, lectures, events, and performances, MVP strives to question existing standards that emerge from academia and contemporary art institutions. Monte Vista Projects collaborates with local, national, and international artist-run spaces. We prioritize working with under-represented artists to broaden access to artistic discourse.
SCOTTY
Founded in 2006 in the smallest house in Berlin-Kreuzberg, SCOTTY is an independent, artist-run project space led by eight visual artists. It functions as an open platform for exhibitions, performances, and film programmes that engage with social and cultural-political issues. Operating outside the commercial art market, SCOTTY emphasizes artistic autonomy, collective decision-making, and non-hierarchical collaboration. In addition to its local programming, SCOTTY initiates national and international partnerships, promoting visibility and exchange among autonomous art spaces.
uniōn
uniōn was established in 2018 as an independent contemporary art space dedicated to artists and curators in process of consolidation in order to develop a wider community of art projects in Mexico City. Parallel to the program, uniōn operates an artist residency for art practitioners whose main interest is art installation focused on site-specific.