WALL OF THIRST

Official Selection at the 29th
Eduardo León Jimenes Art Contest
Curated by: José Roca, Luis Graham Castillo & Suset Sánchez

"The wall of thirst" (El muro de la sed), by Yermine Richardson, forcefully materializes the political dimension of water: a large wall covered with water-carrying buckets becomes a set of megaphones that transmit community stories, highlighting the daily struggles of accessing this resource. Thus, water ceases to be solely a natural element to reveal its status as a contested common good.

- José Roca 

The Silent Crisis and the Exchange

In the Dominican Republic, water scarcity is a quiet, domestic struggle. While official metrics claim 97% of the population has access to water, failing infrastructure leaves most urban households with an average of just 11 hours of water a day. To survive, families store water in open containers, which inadvertently become breeding grounds for dengue-carrying mosquitoes. Addressing this public health hazard, we  initiated a direct community intervention: trading new, airtight containers for the heavily worn, open buckets used by local residents.

Most of these surrendered objects were originally discarded commercial paint buckets repurposed for survival, a connection that subtly allowed painting to remain a foundational element of my artistic practice.

This sonic installation exposes our failure as a nation:  

the inability to sustain a system that provides water effectively and consistently.

The surrendered vessels were subsequently assembled into a monumental 3.77 x 7.60-meter wall, presented for the 29th Eduardo León Jimenes Art Contest. Moving beyond visual accumulation, the structure operates as an immersive sonic apparatus. A built-in sound system utilizes the hollow cavities of the discarded paint buckets and plastic tanks as resonant chambers, broadcasting the recorded testimonies of the residents.

Constructed from hundreds of buckets  extracted from La Aviación (La Romana) and Los Ciruelitos (Santiago) in the Dominican Republic, the work points to the thirst in our homes as the result of structural negligence and a direct assault on our lives.