Becoming-Hydra VI

Becoming-Hydra VI is a sculpture by the Portuguese artist, Inês Zenha. In 2025, the sculpture was included in the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition, Águas Turbias (Murky Waters), at Centro de Arte Dos Mayo in Spain. At the start of the exhibition, viewers were confronted by a large-scale installation of a ruptured, leaking, tiled bathroom. Conceived as an oratory, the installation also functioned as a metaphor for the opening of a larger drainage system, a network through which the murky waters are carried underground. Subsequently, a series of darkened rooms was transformed into a liquid underworld, featuring paintings and sculptures that depicted mud, water, and bodily fluids in various states of transformation. Steering viewers beyond the gendered space of the bathroom, Zenha constructed a chthonic landscape through which to explore “the monstrous, the animal, the dark, the foreign, the feminine, and the queer,” realms typically suppressed by society. 1

Becoming-Hydra VI is a tall ceramic sculpture composed of two plant-like forms. The forms give the impression of two nascent seedlings sprouting from the earth, unfurling in the early stages of growth. The sculpture was one of several weed-like forms representing wild resistance in Águas Turbias. The sculpture’s title refers to the mythological figure of Lernaean Hydra, a multi-headed serpentine monster who lived in the swamp of Lerna, thought to be one of the entrances to the underworld. The artist draws on Lernaean Hydra, a figure who regrew two heads for every one that was cut off, as a symbol of regeneration and resilience in the face of external challenges. The figure’s symbolism is portrayed by the sculpture’s apparent growth and multiplication, embodying the survivalist tendencies of the fluid forms which inhabit the artist’s subterranean landscape.

1 https://ca2m.org/en/exhibitions/ines-zenha-murky-waters