Work of Water

And your Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees and in men’s habitations”
Sacred Quran -Surah Nahl 16, ayat 68

Work of Water operates as a logistical field station—a three-part installation distributed across the Fairmount Water Works. Structured as interconnected Outposts, the work functions as a social sculpture in which viewers move through a system of terrestrial measurement and celestial flow.

The site’s history as a hydraulic infrastructure is reconfigured as a knowledge system—one that channels observation, time, and civic intention. Anchored by Benjamin Banneker, the project recalibrates his almanac practice within this environment, positioning the Water Works as both instrument and subject.

Irrigation operates as the central principle: the directed movement of knowledge as Currents. Histories, observations, and sacred text circulate rather than remain fixed, shaped by conditions of flow, accumulation, and release.

Sculpture, sound, and moving image function as interdependent carriers within this system. Video Almanac sequences extend Banneker’s temporal logic into the present, while live sound translates environmental data into frequency.

Grounded in Qur’anic philosophy and informed by the stewardship of the Bee, the work advances a seven-phase continuum. The Outposts remain open instruments—structures for transmission—where form emerges through circulation between archive, atmosphere, and public encounter.

About the Artist

Taji Ra’oof Nahl (b. 1961, USA) is a conceptual  artist  working across sculpture, film, sound, and collective study. He is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts. He is the architect of the TR7 Ecosystem—an evolving platform that organizes installations, moving image, performance, and collaboration into a unified cultural infrastructure. His work operates through Field Trips, Video Almanacs, live scoring sessions, and staged productions that examine overlooked histories and the movement of knowledge through civic space.

Rooted in Qur’anic epistemology, Nahl advances a method he defines as artistic journalism, merging documentation, sound, and visual form to engage historical record and contemporary conditions.

Long-running initiatives include the Microfilm Festival, Renaissance Report Live, Ice Station Zero, The Other Sounds of Philadelphia, the Adam Vocabulary Club, and the 2Spiral Collective. Together, these platforms generate installations, films, sonic environments, and public activations that function as interconnected parts of a larger system.

His work has been presented in museums, universities, and civic contexts across the United States, establishing a durable model for collaborative inquiry, cultural stewardship, and public-facing knowledge production.