Nadia Botello: Theophany
Jul 11–Oct 5, 2025
Image Gallery
Nadia Botello, What the River Says
Nadia Botello: Theophany
Jul 11–Oct 5, 2025
What might a river have to say for itself if we knew how to listen?
In Theophany, sound artist and composer Nadia Botello invites us into conversation with the San Antonio River. The exhibition unfolds across image, sculpture, sound, and stone, asking us to reconsider the river not as backdrop, but as speaker.
A 16mm film submerged in the river returns bearing its own image (What the River Says). Interactive sculptures invite the listener to physically resonate their own body to hear long-form compositions created from hydrophone recordings, over a century of USGS river data, and breaths excerpted between speaking and singing (Bodies of Water). These breath fragments echo Yanaguana—the early name for the San Antonio River, often translated as “spirit waters”—and remind us that each exhale returns moisture to the air, folding our bodies back into the water cycle. Silk banners reveal microscopic images of microplastics in the watershed (Phainein), while limestone boulders ground us in the geology of the Edwards Aquifer (Sediment).
Moving across time and material, Theophany is a meditation on the San Antonio River as an active presence. Botello’s work invites deep attention: what might become known if we allowed the river to speak on its own terms?
–Nadia Botello