Hours of vernissage from
6 to 9PM.
49 Rue Ramey, 75018 Paris
EXHIBITION DATES :
18-21 February,
2026
18-21 February,
2026
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“How to Prevent a Drop of Water from Drying?” draws from the Buddhist concept of Bardo, a state of transition between death and rebirth. Created by international students in Paris, the exhibition reflects lived experiences of in-between states and will take form as a public exhibition in February 2026.
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The drop dries up if it remains separate - just as the self, clinging to individuality, is confined,
unable to drift with the natural flow of being. Left alone, it is bound to evaporate, just as the
individual is bound to suffer and perish. When the drop enters the sea, it loses its separateness but gains eternity, continuing to exist in another form. In the same way, the self finds liberation by dissolving into the sea of awareness - by dropping away the sense of self and plunging into something greater than oneself.
Inspired by The Bardo Thödol (Fremantle & Trungpa, 1975), a Buddhist set of instructions guiding the dead between death to rebirth, and to offering the living insight into the journey between birth and death, the exhibition How to prevent a drop of water from drying? echoes these teachings, bringing a light to many forms of death that can occur within modern life.
Bardo means ‘gap’. It is not only the interval of suspension after we die but also suspension in the living situations. Throughout our lives, we experience endings both small (a leaf falling from a tree) and large (the loss of a loved one), times when there is no clarity, no certainty. We are wired to shy away from the unfamiliar, plunge into denial, and cling to what we know. The Bardo Thödol invites us to recognise that it is not change itself that threatens us, but our resistance to trusting the unknown process of cultivating awareness and compassion in the bardo of life.
As Duchamp put it, “It’s not what you see that is art, art is the gap.” (Schwartz, 1970) Art is often celebrated when a piece is completed, yet at its core, it is a process — a continuous negotiation between idea, form, and perception. As it stated in the essay by psychiatrist Mark Epstein, that both the making and experiencing of art involve a shared state of mind in which the self and the object enhance and inform each other. (Baas & Jacob, 2004) This encounter opens a space of heightened consciousness - lucid, tense, and profoundly alive - where impermanence reveals itself not as a loss, but as a source of insight. “A feeling as of something limitless, unbounded,”(Baas & Jacob, 2004) as Freud described it, conveys a sense of the oceanic that connects us to something greater than ourselves.
In an attempt to explore bardo principles such as acceptance, impermanence, and
interdependence, the exhibition highlights practices that encourage us to embrace and navigate immediate transitions of all kinds.
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