III
Fountain

Caroline Mesquita completes her spa landscape by installing a fountain with several taps in the apse of HALLE FÜR KUNST. Alongside and circling the fountain, Mesquita has placed golden drops of shimmering metal to represent splashes of water. Another two metal paintings can also be found in this room: one featuring a drop of water, the other depicting a bucket. 

In spas and bathhouses, a fountain may signal the end of a cycle, where the cooling of the feet forms the end of a bathing routine. But fountains also serve as man-made structures for the extraction of water from groundwater pipes or spring wells. As drinking water is essential for human, animal and more-than-human natural life and survival, wells have played a key role in the history of mankind. In fact, water wells and fountains have been documented in the Mediterranean region since around 8000 BC. Mesquita’s reconstruction of this water source is also reminiscent of an archaeological find.

The fountain is an important motif in literature as well as in the history of art and painting, where it is often associated with rejuvenation. Both in Greek and Celtic mythology, the cleansing bath was seen as a source of restoration. Celtic mythology even exaggerates this idea: it was believed that a bath in the Fountain of Youth would bestow eternal youth and immortality. In particular, the painting The Fountain of Youth by Ludwig Cranach the Elder from 1546, depicts this myth iconographically with an image of a bath. It is quite comparable to Caroline Mesquita’s spatial realization of the bathhouse in the exhibition’s main hall, but at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark the human characters have been exchanged with animal and superhuman figures. The literary motif of the locus amoenus, meaning ​“lovely place,” was also often associated with the fountain, a central theme in idealized depictions of nature from the Roman imperial period up to the 16^th century.

Throughout the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, wells often appear as a gateway to another world, such as in the story of Mother Hulda, in which a widow lets her beautiful, hard-working stepdaughter spin at the well, while her own ugly daughter can pursue her laziness. When the spinning stepdaughter’s bobbin falls into the well and her stepmother forces her to retrieve it, she wakes up in a blooming meadow. The girl fulfills the requests of a talking bread loaf and a tree, works diligently for Mother Hulda and shakes her bed to make it snow. But when she gets homesick, Mother Hulda lets her return and showers her with gold to take with her. At home, the stepdaughter recounts her good fortune, whereupon the widow sends her other daughter. However, the latter does not help the bread or the tree and does not work. As punishment, she receives bad luck, which clings to her forever.

With her fountain and bathhouse installation, Caroline Mesquita also seems to be telling a story that offers to transport us to another world like a fairytale. But does her installation really depict another world? Or does Mesquita instead paint a picture that prompts us to question our very human-centered view of ​“the social” and perhaps reconsider it as something composed of multiple species, where humans are not superior but merely one among many? In this vein, instead of creating despotic and dystopian images of doom in our world threatened by climate change, the artist invites us to imagine a life lived peacefully among other species, animals and technical beings – a respectful coexistence in one world and one space.

Source, 2024
Brass, patinated brass, stainless steel
210 × 160 × 160 cm 

Goutte bleue, 2024
Patinated brass
48 × 56 cm 

Seau, 2024
Patinated brass
48 × 56 cm

Gant, 2024
Patinated brass
56 × 44 cm