The shape of water—artist Alia Farid on the impact of extractive industries in Iraq and Kuwait

The multidisciplinary work of the Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid explores what she describes because the “advanced and fragmented histories” of those areas, and the way types, symbols, rituals and social units coalesce throughout continents. This may contain filming a fishermen’s pageant on the island of Qeshm within the Persian Gulf, putting in an orchard of duplicate date palms produced from mechanical parts on the terrace of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Artwork or making big resin sculptures within the type of scaled-up Kuwaiti ingesting fountains.

However whether or not she is writing, drawing, making movies or creating sculptural installations in myriad media, Farid’s work is underpinned by a want to foreground histories which have usually been marginalised or obscured by the International North. By analyzing particular communities and lived histories and specializing in native practices and traditions, Farid not solely traces the motion of individuals, but in addition reveals how on a regular basis objects, architectural types and ornamentation have been formed and tailored by colonial histories and the exploitation of pure assets. Farid has been nominated for this yr’s Artes Mundi 10 prize, and for the award’s exhibition in Cardiff she is exhibiting work concerning the affect—social, political, historic and ecological—of extractive industries on southern Iraq and Kuwait. She additionally at the moment has a solo exhibition on the Chisenhale Gallery in London, the place she is exhibiting new textile works depicting the Palestinian diaspora in Puerto Rico. As this yr’s recipient of the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter museum’s Lise Wilhelmsen Artwork Award, she may have a solo present on the Norwegian museum in September 2024.

The Artwork Newspaper: Your Chisenhale fee consists of 16 rugs, hand woven and embroidered in Samawa, southern Iraq, that depict companies, buildings and shopfronts owned by Puerto Rico’s Palestinian inhabitants. These photos of contact and convergence between cultures additionally appear to mirror parts of your private heritage.

Alia Farid: I used to be born and spent my childhood years in Kuwait, and later lived in Puerto Rico. My mother and father needed to lift my siblings and I with equal emphasis on each cultures. We lived backwards and forwards. However in 1998 I moved to Puerto Rico for 11 years. I completed highschool in Puerto Rico after which began learning artwork there. By way of my household I met members of the Arab diaspora in Puerto Rico, and in dialog started seeing parallels between the 2 areas. Though this challenge was developed a lot later, it’s acquainted.

The photographs on the rugs current a placing different to the same old vacationer photos of Puerto Rico and its individuals.

As a youthful artist I wasn’t readily included in exhibits on artwork from the Caribbean, Latin America or the Arab world. I keep in mind lots of my artist buddies who lived consecutively in any of the areas have been, and I keep in mind feeling a bit ignored. Possibly it’s as a result of my work doesn’t fulfill expectations of what artwork from a sure area appears to be like like, however I’m OK with that.

The Chisenhale rugs usually show textual content that may mix completely different languages in a single piece, which jogs my memory of you saying you grew up listening to Arabic spoken with a Spanish accent.

I take into consideration the connection between completely different languages as moments of proximity and distance. And in weaving completely different languages, or drawing the writing, how the connection between writing and drawing is destabilised.

Totally different cultural, historic and political views additionally coalesce in In Lieu of What Is, your 5 big water fountain sculptures on present on the Nationwide Museum Cardiff as a part of Artes Mundi. Made out of lacquered fibreglass, they take the type of vessels historical and fashionable, lots of which additionally echo the shapes of public ingesting fountains in cities all through Kuwait.

Simply driving round Kuwait I grew to become fascinated with these ingesting fountains that relate to an extended custom of providing water within the desert. Earlier than oil was found, individuals within the space obtained their ingesting water principally from the Shatt al-Arab river at a time when relations between Iraq and Kuwait have been much less hostile. For the reason that Kuwaiti-Iraq struggle, the border between Kuwait and Iraq has grow to be very strict, and Kuwait is now principally depending on water from desalination vegetation, which is a large pressure on the atmosphere. The vessels and the brand new materials tradition they symbolize are a part of a bunch of works I’ve been creating on each side of the Kuwait-Iraq border.

You may have taken a number of the current water fountains from Kuwait that riff on conventional vessels, however you could have additionally made your personal addition within the type of an enormous duplicate of the ever present plastic water bottle used throughout the globe.

Every of the vessel shapes holds details about the cultural and commerce networks of the area. The lota, for instance, is a vessel extra generally seen in South Asia, after which there’s a juglet from the Levant, a jerrycan for carrying holy water which I actually like due to the way it represents Saudi Arabia’s relationship each with non secular tourism and oil. Put in all collectively, the vessels create this map of networks. The plastic bottle is a manner into the challenge for people who find themselves much less conversant in a number of the different vessel shapes. Plastics and resins are byproducts of oil, and sure, partly I’m within the provenance of the vessel shapes but in addition the provenance of supplies and materials entanglements.

The confluence of water and oil is on the centre of Chibayish, a movie initially commissioned by the Whitney Biennial in 2022. A continuation of that work, additionally titled Chibayish and commissioned by the Vega Basis, was made with the individuals of the marshlands of southern Iraq and is on present in Cardiff.

The Iraqi marshes on the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers is among the most essential wetland ecosystems in Asia. Beneath its subsoil are a number of the greatest oil reserves on the earth, which is the principle cause for the marshes’ many waves of destruction. The movie shouldn’t be scripted, it’s a lengthy dialog and collaboration between [my] film-maker buddy Muhammed Al Mubarak from Bahrain, our buddies in Chibayish and myself. On my Kuwaiti aspect, my paternal grandmother is from southern Iraq. Crossing that border for the primary time was an essential second in my life. I believe it’s essential for individuals to do not forget that we’re not our governments, that these borders will not be actual and to insist on neighborhood and connectivity.

The Chisenhale tapestries are a part of Elsewhere, one other ongoing challenge that you simply describe as a rising materials archive that maps Arab and South Asian migration to Latin America and the Caribbean. Cuba and Trinidad are your subsequent areas of exploration—will this challenge proceed to generate works in woven rug kind?

Sure, that’s the concept. Elsewhere is about build up a quantity of lesser-known tales. It’s a panorama challenge and I selected textile as a medium due to how a lot materials info is contained in a woven work and what the supplies say about circumstances of the place. If you consider the fibres and wool and hairs that go into making a tapestry, the varieties of dyes, whether or not they’re pure or synthetic, it’s all info that may be studied. Elsewhere is panorama depicted but in addition panorama embedded.

Biography

Born: 1985 Kuwait Metropolis

Schooling: 2006 BA Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico; 2008 Grasp of Science in Visible Research, Massachusetts Institute of Know-how; 2012 MA Museum Research and Important Idea, Museu d’Artwork Contemporani de Barcelona

Lives and works: Kuwait and Puerto Rico

Key Reveals: 2019 Portikus, Frankfurt/Primary; 2020 Yokohama Triennale; 2021 tenth Asia Pacific Triennial of Modern Artwork, Brisbane; 2022 Kunsthalle Basel; 2022 Whitney Biennial, New York

• Alia Farid: Elsewhere, Chisenhale Gallery, London, till 4 February; Artes Mundi 10, Nationwide Museum Cardiff and different venues, till 25 February