The Rainmaker Who Took The Gods To The Streets (2025)

With the installation The Rainmaker Who Took The Gods To The Streets, Taqwa Ali creates a sanctuary of limestone sculptures, food offerings, and found objects in which spirituality and the climate crisis are interwoven. From within the installation, the voice of an invisible female rainmaker can be heard. In her monologue, she confronts a higher power with a devastating flood that she may have caused herself.

For this work, Ali draws inspiration from the history of Buitenplaats Kasteel Wijlre, where she resided in the fall of 2025 and conducted research into the flood that struck Limburg in 2021. She also draws, among other sources, on John S. Mbiti’s influential study African Religions and Philosophy (1990). These various sources converge in a myth in which a ritual to ward off drought turns into a catastrophic flood.

The installation depicts the aftermath: debris suggests that something has collapsed, while the offerings are still fresh. In this way, the work raises questions about the relationship between human and nature, and about responsibility in a time of ecological disruption.