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The river is never still and in Helen Bur’s latest mural painted for the MURArcos Festival in Arcos De Valdevez, neither are we. Titled Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders, the mural gently ripples with deeper meaning. It’s a meditation on movement, memory, and mutuality, and a visual reminder that what flows through us connects us, rather than divides us.
While created in Arcos de Valdevez, a town shaped by the Vez River, the river depicted in the painting is not Portuguese. It is the River Fowey, in Cornwall, UK and the home of artist Helen Bur. This geographical displacement is intentional. In an era dominated by nationalism, walls, and forced separations, Helen Bur invites us to imagine what happens when rivers connect rather than divide.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Helen
In a dark political climate where freedoms and lives are destroyed by the fight for borders, the artist wanted to metaphorically join the two rivers as a reminder that we are all connected by our waters and the sea. The mural becomes a confluence: two rivers from two nations, two lives, two bodies, meeting in shared space, shared grief, shared joy.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
“One Cannot Bathe Twice in the Same River…”
At the heart of the mural’s message lies a quote by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, drawn from his book Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter:
“One cannot bathe twice in the same river because already, in her inmost recesses, the human being shares the destiny of flowing water… A being dedicated to water is a being in flux.”
Gaston Bachelard, Water & Dreams
Bachelard saw water as the element of transformation, emotion, and intuition. To live like water is to accept constant change, the loss of stability, and the beauty of surrender.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
Helen Bur channels this precisely, her muses, two women immersed in water, appear weightless, open, unguarded. There is no separation between them, no divide. Just vulnerability and connection. One, head tilted to the sky in quiet release; the other, body forward in full surrender, drifting as the river flows around and through them.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
The painting channels everything the river represents: freedom, movement, surrender, direction, and change. The palette is soft yet intentional, teal, ochre, earth brown, and glints of white trace the ripples in water, abstract and alive with motion.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
The Silk Tree
Delicately painted pink blossoms from the nearby Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin), are seen drifting on the surface, anchoring the mural in both place and time.
Though native to Asia, this ornamental species flourishes across continents, including Portugal. Its feathery, ephemeral flowers reflect the mural’s themes of tenderness, impermanence, and shared connection across borders.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
Dappled shadows from surrounding trees fall across the mural’s surface, also blending real and painted nature into a poetic union of earth, art, and time. These tender gestures bind the environment to the artwork.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
Community as Resistance
Water becomes a metaphor not only for personal transformation, but for fluid identities, resistance to rigidity, and the power of empathy beyond borders.
“The painting depicts two women bathing together in a moment of openness, vulnerability and joy — a testament of how shared experience and community empowerment are essential tools of resistance in these times.”
In this mural, water is not just physical. It is symbolic of connection, solidarity, and the current that links all of us, across oceans, languages, and lived realities. Helen reminds us that the sea touches every shore. That no border can contain the movement of grief, love, or the human spirit.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
Art as Buoyancy in Brutal Times
Helen Bur shares words as she reflects on the world around us today. In a time when global grief, social fracture, and ecological collapse threaten to submerge us.
“Recently I have been questioning what role art has in such a brutal and harrowing time of existence. How do we use our platforms, big or small, to have any impact or significance? So huge is the overwhelm of desperation to help but feeling completely powerless that you can become paralysed…
When we feel the overwhelm of grief for the world, we must somehow keep making. As artists perhaps we have the privilege of thinking and processing through creativity that gives us a larger responsibility to provide light, reflection.
We cannot move through darkness without a single ray of light—we have to feel and own our joy and love now more than ever because these are the things that give us power, empathy, community and connection. And without these, we are quickly lost.”
Helen Bur
Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders is a reminder that to feel joy, tenderness, and beauty in bleak times is not an indulgence but a necessity. It gives artists, and all of us, permission to float, to feel, to process, and ultimately, to persevere.
Helen Bur: Connected Rivers // Water Knows No Borders. Arcos De Valdevez. Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
Helen Bur’s mural reminds us that we are water and even when the world floods with uncertainty or goes dark, we must continue to reflect light.
Painted for the 2025 edition of the MURArcos Festival, Helen Bur’s mural is located on the outer wall of Escola Secundária de Arcos de Valdevez in northern Portugal. The piece connects the River Fowey in Cornwall, UK — the artist’s home — with the Vez River, which runs through the heart of Arcos de Valdevez. Through this symbolic confluence, the mural explores ideas of flow, shared humanity, and borderless empathy. Created with care and collaboration, the work was made possible thanks to the support and invitation of Regg Salgado, Mariana Santos, Daniela Guerreiro and Município de Arcos de Valdevez.
Image Copyright Madalena Gouveiaa @dontblinktwice_
You can find Helen Bur on GraffitiStreet here where you’ll discover her latest works, exclusive interviews, and updates from the GraffitiStreet blog. Stay connected to explore more of her deeply moving murals, thoughts on art in uncertain times, and the stories behind her most powerful pieces.