Water is a Currency Exhibition Opening

Water is a Currency traces and defines diaspora as a water-based system of spiritual transmission — where value is generated through movement, knowledge survives through circulation, and attunement operates as ancestral intelligence.

The works in this exhibition engage water as a material force that remembers movement, labor, prayer and survival.

Situated at the edge of the Pacific, the exhibition unfolds as a living current — an offering that invites viewers to slow their bodies, tune their senses, and recognize themselves as participants within an ongoing system of transmission that is at once ancient and unfinished.

Water is our archive — the richest wealth of our shared material existence. We evolved from its sacred pools and are called to return: to remember our power, our divinity, our indelible right to live joyous and free.

Concept Statement

Water is a Currency reframes diaspora not as a condition of loss, but as an advanced system of circulation, one that moves bodies, spiritual knowledge, memory, and care across oceans and generations. Rather than bypassing histories of rupture or displacement, we seek to imagine the alternative futures and realities our times have tasked us with bringing into being.

Before borders, before capital, before the modern nation-state, water functioned as the first economy: a medium of passage, exchange, ritual and return. Diasporic movement across seas did not simply scatter people; it activated complex networks of transmission. Through rhythm, prayer, gesture, oral knowledge and embodied practice, ancestral intelligence traveled — encoded not in institutions, but in bodies attuned to memory and the sacred.

This exhibition proposes that we descend from transmitters: navigators, healers, ritualists and caretakers who carried cosmologies across continents under conditions that demanded adaptation rather than preservation. Diaspora, in this sense, is not rupture but redistribution — a decentralized system that allows spiritual technologies to survive by transforming, recalibrating, and re-emerging in new forms.

Across sculpture, moving image and light, the works in Water is a Currency approach art as infrastructure rather than illustration.

These works circulate knowledge the way water circulates life: through flow, rhythm, evaporation and return. Value is generated through movement, meaning survives through circulation, and attunement operates as ancestral intelligence.

Participating Artists

• Avila Santo
• Candace Reyes
• Dane Nakama
• Li Rothrock
• Ricardo Rodriguez
• Seda Saar
• Tunmi Da Silva

Artwork provided by Ricardo Rodriguez.

Consent Agreement

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Beach House Parking

Beach House parking is available year-round on a first come, first served basis.

Upon arrival, guests must pay for parking at Pay & Display machines located in each section of the lot and display your receipt on the dashboard. Rates are $4 per hour or $10 per day. Exact change cash and credit cards are accepted.

Guests displaying a valid Disabled Person placard or license plate may park in the Beach House lot for 50% the posted rate. Senior Beach Parking permits issued by the City of Santa Monica are valid in the Beach House lot. For more information, please visit How to Obtain a Senior Beach Parking Permit.

City of Santa Monica Day Beach Permits and California State Parks Vehicle Day Use Annual Passes are NOT accepted at the Beach House.

Additional Parking

If the lot is full, additional parking Lots 8 & 9 (south of the Beach House) and Will Rogers State Beach (North of the Beach House) are within walking distance along the beach footpath. The footpath of the Marvin Braude bike trail connects to the Beach House. Check Santa Monica's city-wide Parking Map for updated information about the Beach House parking lot and other beach lots.

Driving Directions to the Beach House

From Los Angeles: Take the 10 West, which will become Pacific Coast Highway when it reaches the beach. At the second traffic light, Beach House Way, turn left into the parking lot.

From Malibu: Take Pacific Coast Highway south. Turn right at Beach House Way, into the parking lot.

From Santa Monica (downtown): Head west towards Ocean Ave. Turn left at Ocean Ave. Turn right at Moomat Ahiko Way (after Colorado/the pier entrance) which will have signs for Pacific Coast Highway. Turn left at Beach House Way into our parking lot.

Access

The Annenberg Community Beach House is wheelchair accessible and ADA compliant. Two beach wheelchairs will be available for this activity. To reserve, call Guest Services at (310) 458-4904 or email [email protected]. For disability related accommodations, please call Guest Services at (310) 458-4904.

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