Sweet Water is a multimedia installation that explores water as a carrier of memory, transformation, and desire. Bringing together new works by S. Elisabetta Castell, the installation engages with queer narratives, forgotten figures of Ottoman festive culture, and the representation of gender and desire across history, art, and popular culture.

Combining historical research with personal memory, the works move across different media to trace bodies, spaces, and narratives—as acts of recovery, homage, and revision. Central to the installation are figures such as the Odalisque, Köçek, Çengi, and Curcunabazlar, whose histories reveal fluid and subversive understandings of gender that have often been erased or distorted over time.

The installation is accompanied by the short film Sweet Water, created in collaboration with the artist Laurene Bartels, which extends these themes through a surreal narrative of transformation, belonging, and desire. Additional elements, including watercolor works and a video slideshow of queer spaces in Freiburg, further connect past and present, questioning how cultural memory is constructed and whose stories are remembered or forgotten.

eight fabrics and four videos (2025)