Leaky Saints and Hydrofeminism Flood MU at Dutch Design Week

A two-metre-scale installation of kinetic water structures, video saints and choral rituals has filled MU Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven for Dutch Design Week 2026, which runs from 17 to 25 October. Artist Boris Acket and fashion collective Maison the Faux created Everything Moist Seems Alive together with MU, and the piece runs on a continuous cycle of containment and deluge.

The installation is the product of two years of discussion about water, during which the creatives gravitated toward cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis' concept of "hydrofeminism". In her 2012 essay Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water, Neimanis considered what follows from conceiving the human body primarily as water.

"In this hydrofeminist approach in the sense, we are all bodies of water," MU director Angelique Spaninks said. "The world is made out of water, and so are we, for at least 60 per cent of our body."

She added: "Water is like: we need it. We tend to hide it. We want to control it. We use it as something that we need instead of thinking that we are part of it. And all these ideas have culminated into this total installation."

What does the visitor actually see?

A dark, cavernous room contains five interconnected water structures — the "water bodies" — linked by clear pipes. Each represents a different form of or interaction with water:

• The Well: three pumps that draw water from the central tub and feed the rest of the system.
• The Womb: a large circular tub at the centre of the space, standing for how everything "gets born in water, some way or another", in Spaninks' words.
• The Whirl: a white cloth that spins and dances with the water's movement.
• The Wake: water dripping slowly onto a hot plate, emitting bursts of steam.
• The Waterfall: a usually dripping dam figure that turns into a torrent at the installation's climax.

Towering video screens show glistening, oozing humanoid figures called the "leaky saints", which drip shimmering fluid from their eyes, pores and other orifices. They are the most overt visual embodiment of Neimanis' theory. "We lactate. We sweat. We have blood," Spaninks summarised. Around them sit marshy candlelit altars and wishing wells, and several times a day the Dutch National Opera and Ballet animates the space with ritualistic choral performances.

Where do the gargoyles come in?

Greek myths and their powerful rivers shaped the design, but so did urban infrastructure. The clear pipes nod to the sanitation systems beneath daily life, and gothic 3D-printed metallic ornaments on the pipes were inspired by the gargoyles of Paris, traditionally used to redirect rainwater away from buildings.

The collaboration itself is a study in contrast. Maison the Faux co-founder Joris Suk told Dezeen: "We are big believers of ornamentation and the beauty of 'a lot' to give some sort of a reaction to mundane bareness."

"What I like is that it's a collision of aesthetics," Suk continued. "Studio Boris Acket is well known for its quite technical and stylish and minimalistic visual approach to things. We are very maximalist. So just bringing those two worlds together has created a lot of the aesthetics that you see here."

Acket is best known for his mechanical fabric canopy Einder, which featured on the world tour of music producer Fred Again. Maison the Faux was founded in 2012 by Suk and Tessa de Boer, both fashion design graduates whose cross-disciplinary practice spans performance art, fashion and costume design, and set and interior design. Their running conceit: "a creative studio posing as a grand couture fashion house".

The installation begins before the main room. A darkened water bar at the entrance lets visitors sample three types of water — or feed it directly into the installation — beneath a suspended mixed-material sculpture by artist Roni(a) Johansson that resembles abstracted flesh, with dozens of moist "egg sacs". After its Eindhoven run, the work stands as a test case for whether hydrofeminist theory can hold a room: a thesis about bodies, plumbing and control, staged at full scale.