APRIL — MAY

Our upcoming exhibition Confluence (7 April - 20 May) brings together three artists whose work approaches historical and contemporary examinations of the sea and other bodies of water as contested cultural, political, legal and socio-economic territories. Expanding on barzakh خزرب the state of “in-between” as a liminal space, a margin, a point of transition, the artists Asha Athman, Islam Shabana and Samra Mayanja explore specific events, situations and mythologies tied to this realm of stasis and separation between borders.

ASHA ATHMAN ’s Sowing and Mending stems from visual and literary media research undertaken in the last two years on marine life, technology and politics in Somalia. The material and immaterial relevance of nets and networks becomes a main point of connection for bringing together parallel realities and imaginations related to the experiences of Somali coastal communities and the nature of diasporic living for Somalis. Learning the traditional manual method of various weaving, rope/net making and embroidery techniques, Asha hopes to bring out conversations she had with her father since she was a child about the fishing industry in the Puntland region of Somalia and the current circumstances of unregulated foreign fishing in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali Sea affecting the livelihood of fishing communities and the natural coastal, terrestrial, aquatic ecosystems. Asha is also experimenting with breaking down and layering different types of images that will feature in the collage and sculpture pieces for this show.

Blueprint for the Deep by SAMRA MAYANJA works with the sounds of thunder and rain, starting with her research into the floods in 2022 in Uganda that displaced tens of thousands of people across the region. The work is also influenced by Ugandan playwright Elvania Zirimu Namukwaya’s play, Family Spear, that looks at the circumstances surrounding a wedding, evoking social contexts in Uganda and the ruptures brought about by the introduction of Christianity and anglicised European identity to the cultural practices and religious beliefs of Ugandan family culture. The piece also revisits the incident of the Nigerian cook, Harrison Okene, kept alive for more than three days underwater by an air pocket, after his boat capsized off the west coast of Africa.

ISLAM SHABANA will present an installation based on the anthology The Geomorphosis Cycles , looking into the intersection between water technologies, mythology and Islamic philosophy through simulation, science fiction and poetry. In the Mediterranean, coastal cities are increasingly threatened by being swallowed by a rising sea and inland ones face the risk of drowning under waves of the sand of an expanding desert. Between the polarised narratives of “submergence and drought”, governments in the region are beginning to use the latest technologies and top-down modes of governance for a ‘futuristic city’. From Alexandria to Marrakech, The Geomorphosis Cycle is an exploration about the politics of the human-made water crisis and to speculate about urban transformations in a post-anthropocene and more-than-human world. Combining collected myths around Egyptian cisterns and Moroccan khattaras with speculative fiction, Shabana questions (neo) colonial narratives on desertification and flooding to unfold hydro-imaginaries from the Maghreb to the Mashrek embedded in the region’s indigenous and historic water infrastructures, opening up a space connecting the world from above and the one from below.

Confluence is a 1-year residency and research programme taking place between Marrakech and Glasgow curated by Alaya Ang, Francesca Masoero and Shayma Nader, and developed by CCA Glasgow & QANAT (a collective platform held by LE 18). Confluence is supported by the International Collaboration Grant of the British Council and Creative Scotland.