A solo exhibition by artist María Campllonch opened April 7 at the Cerrito del Timbre Art Gallery in Cabo San Lucas, featuring works made with a 19th-century photographic process and water drawn from regional aquifers. The show, titled “Aguamala, latido sin corazón, cuerpo sin territorio” (roughly, “Jellyfish, heartbeat without a heart, body without territory”), runs through April 17. Admission is free.
The Cabo San Lucas art exhibition uses cyanotype, a camera-less printing technique, to produce blue-toned images on paper or fabric. What makes Campllonch’s work unusual is her choice of developing medium: she uses water from Baja California Sur’s own sources, including clean aquifer water, treated wastewater, and collected rainwater. The prints are formed through direct solar exposure, a process that takes on literal weight in a region that averages over 300 sunny days per year.
Cyanotype: A 175-Year-Old Process With New Relevance in Los Cabos
Cyanotype was invented in 1842 by English scientist Sir John Herschel. The technique coats paper or cloth with a solution of iron salts, then exposes it to ultraviolet light. Where light hits the treated surface, the salts react and turn a deep Prussian blue. Objects or negatives placed on the surface block light and leave white silhouettes. The process requires no darkroom, no camera, and no electricity.
Botanist Anna Atkins famously used cyanotype in the 1840s to catalog algae specimens, producing what many historians consider the first book illustrated with photographic images. Contemporary artists have revived the technique for its handmade quality and unpredictable results, especially when natural variables like water chemistry and sunlight intensity affect the outcome.
Campllonch’s choice to use regional water as part of her developing process connects the work to Baja California Sur’s ongoing water challenges. Los Cabos draws most of its drinking water from underground aquifers, several of which CONAGUA, Mexico’s national water commission, has classified as overexploited. OOMSAPAS, the municipal water utility for Los Cabos, has struggled to meet demand as the population has grown. The municipality’s permanent residents numbered roughly 350,000 in the 2020 census, but tourist arrivals push water consumption far higher during peak months. The exhibition’s use of clean, residual, and rain water as artistic materials quietly foregrounds these categories of water that residents encounter daily: what comes from the tap, what leaves through the drain, and what falls from the sky too rarely.
Casa de la Cultura Hosts Free Programming Year-Round in Cabo San Lucas
The exhibition is housed inside the Casa de la Cultura “Profa. Nieves Trasviña de Ceseña,” one of two main cultural centers operated by ICA Los Cabos (the Instituto de la Cultura y las Artes, or Institute of Culture and Arts, the municipal arts agency). The building sits in the Cerrito del Timbre neighborhood, a hillside area near downtown Cabo San Lucas. A second Casa de la Cultura operates in San José del Cabo.
These facilities serve as the primary public arts infrastructure in a municipality better known for resort pools than gallery walls. The Casa de la Cultura in Cabo San Lucas offers rotating exhibitions, dance and music classes, and workshops for children and adults. Programming is typically free or low-cost, funded through the municipal government. Héctor Guerrero Santiesteban, the facility’s coordinator, noted at the April 7 opening that the Jardín del Arte, a local civil association of visual artists, collaborated on the exhibition.
ICA Los Cabos is led by director general Tanya Covarrubias Martínez and operates under the administration of Mayor Christian Agúndez Gómez. The institute has organized a series of cultural events through early 2025, including music festivals, theater performances, and gallery shows. For a municipality where commercial galleries in the tourist corridor often price work for collectors, the Casa de la Cultura remains one of few spaces where contemporary art is accessible to all residents.
“Aguamala” is open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., through April 17. The gallery is inside the Casa de la Cultura in the Cerrito del Timbre neighborhood of Cabo San Lucas. No reservation is required. The exhibition was first reported by the Los Cabos municipal government.