Vida y Agua

Vida y Agua is a handcrafted seed paper installation project by Pittsburgh-based artist Maritza Mosquera. It offers participants the opportunity to fund seed-prints and water sculptures to send to communities devastated by food shortages for planting, growing, and nourishing.  

In Spring 2019, Mosquera began this project at the renowned Morgan Paper Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio, by embedding the seeds of high-density, protein-rich plants into Kozo and Linen paper which she handcrafted. These handmade seed papers were then transported to Mosquera’s studio to finalize as works with silkscreen printing and drawing techniques.

Mosquera is currently working on Vida y Agua’s second phase with Artists Image Resource printmakers in Pittsburgh, PA. This stage involves designing and printing the images of continents onto her paper pieces with edible inks.  Printed images will be specific to continents whose populations are suffering from food shortages due to poverty, climate disasters, and/or capitalist gentrifications.

Mosquera’s vision is to create an installation of these paper works alongside jars of water, with each purchase offered not as a consumer good, but as a fund to deliver the seed prints and water jars to areas of the world where they may save lives. 

Vida y Agua will be exhibited at the Morgan Conservatory gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, in October of 2020, and later at Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with screen-printed works based on the original Vida y Agua concepts. A preview of the original screen-printed pieces will be shown at Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 28, 2020.