Connecting people through art 

The Han Nefkens Foundation, in collaboration with NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, is thrilled to announce the premiere of More Spilled Blood Than Drinkable Water, the latest work of Panos Aprahamian, recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Museu Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2024, which enabled the creation of this work.

The work will be on view at NTU CCA Singapore, from 11th to 27thof September.

We would also like to extend an invitation to the conversation between the artist and film curator Viknesh Kobinathan, on Wednesday 17th of September, from 6.30 to 8pm.

In this thoughtful exchange, artist Panos Aprahamian and film curator Viknesh Kobinathan probe the stratigraphy of meanings sedimented in Aprahamian’s latest work situating it in the context of the Lebanese artist’s extended inquiry into dystopian landscapes, tormented histories, ecological devastations, and supernatural horror. The conversation will be preceded by the screening of the film.

The final instalment of Aprahamian’s unplanned “Karantina Trilogy”, More Spilled Blood Than Drinkable Water (2025), takes place, like two previous works, in Karantina, a former quarantine district in northeastern Beirut bordered by the Beirut River. One of the most polluted parts of the city due to its proximity to the port, a waste sorting facility, and an infamous, now-closed slaughterhouse, the area has witnessed environmental crises and uncounted deaths. In the film, the disembodied voice of a paranormal investigator recounts her contemplative journey along the river’s course as a descent into the underworld, addressing the chemical compounds, spectral echoes, foul odour, and invisible presences that dwell in a dystopian landscape made of flows and stagnations. As the camera follows the emergences and submergences of the riverine water, it captures glimpses of deteriorating ecologies and the wavering reflections of industrial infrastructures while the narration—part investigative report, part diary entry, part speculative fiction—entangles historical chronologies in a non-linear sequence. Blending documentary realism, abstract sequences, and fictional genres, the work slowly excavates deep sediments of sorrows within a wounded landscape haunted by the spirits of uncountable entities, both human and non-human, who lost their lives there. Turning the water body into a portal onto intangible worlds and an uneasy mirror of the present, Aprahamian’s work ponders over and bears witness to the aftermath of violence, historical trauma, and environmental degradation.

The partners for the Han Nefkens Foundation – Museu Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2024 are: NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; WIELS (Brussels, Belgium); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (Manila, Philippines); Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, UAE) and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (Naples, Italy). NTU CCA Singapore is a partner of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Museu Tàpies Video Art Production Grant since 2019.