Son[i]a #452
Ameneh Solati
The degradation and near-destruction of the Mesopotamian Marshes in the 1990s is often narrated either as an ecological tragedy or as retaliation by Saddam Hussein’s regime against rebellious populations. Iraqi-Iranian research-based artist, writer and architect Ameneh Solati (Iran, 1988) proposes another reading. Her work situates the drainage of the wetlands within a longer history of environmental governance that extends from British colonial engineering schemes to Ba‘athist technopolitics, where water infrastructures – canals, dams and diversions became tools to reshape territory and discipline its inhabitants. By transforming the marshlands, the state(s) sought to render the landscape legible and controllable while undermining the autonomy of the Ahwari people, whose ways of life had long depended on the ecological complexity and mobility of the wetlands.
Tracing this history from the perspective of the wetlands themselves, Ameneh Solati explores the entanglement of land, water and political power, and how these histories of ecological violence resonate today. Moving between spatial research and artistic practice, her work draws on archives, oral testimonies, fragments of history and Islamic cosmology to construct alternative narratives of place.
In this podcast, Ameneh Solati reflects on the marshes as revolutionary landscapes in southern Iraq, the relationship between environment and resistance, and the challenges of researching a territory that remains partially inaccessible and historically underdocumented. The conversation also touches on collective spatial investigation, collaborations with activists and communities, and experimental forms of mapping that rethink the relationship between humans, water and land.
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