Aghmat, Call the waves
On the Invention of Geometry, Installation 2022
The series of drawings on fabric is a formal reflection inspired, among others, by the work of rural sociologist Paul Pascon, which considers how the introduction of colonial geometries of extravism and the ‘modernisation’ of water management, altered socio-cultural, temporal and agri-cultural practices in the artist’s hometown.
Aghmat, now a small town next to Marrakech (Morocco), was a prominent Amazigh crossroad in the 9th Century. Its name, ‘the dye’, owed to Aghmat’s agricultural activity within the arid region of El Haouz. On fabrics dyed with locally grown pomegranate, eucalyptus, oak and walnut tree, AZ OOR studies two bodies of water creating a palimpsest of lines and matters which complicates the binary distinction between modernity and tradition, while writing an ode to the modes of belonging that these two interwoven water infrastructures encapsulate.
Call The Waves
Exhibition and public programme curated by SWAY (Louise Hobson) & QANAT (Francesca Masoero & Shayma Nader) with Alia Mossallam, Bint Mbareh, Fern Thomas, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Maya Al Khaldi, AZ OOR.
Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff), 5th August - 20th November 2022
Call the Waves is a group exhibition and public program that explores interconnected relationships with different bodies of water. Through underground waterways, springs, rivers and seas, the artists, musicians, and historians in this exhibition propose a reclaiming of songs and stories, histories and futures.
Call the Waves follows the many ways in which we can think with and learn from water, emerging from investigations into the transformations and dynamics that shape our sense of belonging. The exhibition holds the echoes of displacement and extraction that are interwoven with colonialism and modernization. In parallel, it summons the many waves of remembrance and the underground channels of resistance that shape and share alternative possibilities.
