A bundle of reeds : contemporary art after the Tigris

Omtale

In 1977, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl organised an expedition called the ‘Tigris’ to build and sail an ancient-style reed boat down the Tigris River in Iraq, out into the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and across the Arabian Sea. Among the crew of Heyerdahl’s ‘Tigris’ was a young Iraqi artist named Rashad Selim. Selim’s time aboard the ‘Tigris’ and subsequent work provides the starting point for this new publication, which critically reconsiders Heyerdahl’s original expedition and the wider history of the region. Alongside texts by Selim and Lewis, the book brings together a range of artists and thinkers who are developing new frameworks for understanding the region traversed by the Tigris River, from Turkey and Iraq to the Arabian Sea. It also reflects on the global relevance of contemporary Iraq, a country which – as Selim has written – maps out the worst political, social, and environmental fears that threaten us and our planet. Pelin Tan traces the recent histories of political and ecological violence along the Tigris; Rijin Sahakian examines the enduring effects of the American wars in Iraq; Mike Sperlinger examines Heyerdahl’s original expedition as a snapshot of the Gulf region and its conflicts in the late 1970s; Simon Starling explores craft and cultural exchange through his project Houseboat for Ho; Dilip Menon explores ‘oceanic cosmopolitanism’ in the Indian Ocean region and the politics of nostalgia in the return to ancient traditions; and Nora Al-Badri and Zoya Masoud consider technology’s role in recovering and reimagining Mesopotamian cultural heritage.