Chibayish 2022

Alia Farid’s recent work examines how nature in southern Iraq has, since the advent of modernity, been mobilised as a political tool. Her new film Chibayish was recorded in the marshlands of southern Iraq, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in a region engulfed by oil infrastructure and industrial waste. It captures the artist’s exchanges with three young residents as they map the community that inhabits the marsh, and belt out calls to the buffalo that roam its waters. Mixing footage with CGI animation, Chibayish comes to explore cultural identity, history, colonialism and the right to remain.