In front of you, you see this long fabric work.
This was created by this artist called Dala Nasser.
The artist now explains how they came up with this concept, which I am now translating to BSL.
In 2019, I made this work called ‘Mineral Lick’.
I was living in Beirut, Lebanon at the time.
This was post the ‘Trash Crisis’ in the summer of 2016 where we all became very much aware of the infrastructural failures that were around us.
There was trash piling on the streets, and if it would rain, then trash and rainwater would come into our pipes.
We were afraid of our tap water. It stayed with me.
I remember just turning on the tap and seeing brown water, and thinking to myself, “This is the most water-rich area.”
This didn't start with me necessarily thinking, “I want to make art.”
It was just: “I'm living in this city. Why is our tap water so disgusting, undrinkable and unsafe?”
And the more I started to look into this, I thought of a very simple kind of science experiment.
I remember my tap water was brown.
My best friend lived ten minutes away from me.
I tried drinking their tap water, which turned out to be salty.
So I decided to get a map and divide it into different neighbourhoods.
I then collected tap water from my friends’ houses in those regions.
I wanted to see the pH of the tap water, which was the saltiest or the most acidic.
So, in a large pot, I added half salt and half water.
I then put a piece of fabric in there.
I boiled the tap water with the salt, which completely dissolves in the water.
Then, when I took the fabric out, it started to sprout salt crystals.
It was the first time that I experimented using material as information.
I describe materials as a witness now.
Each piece of fabric holds information of the neighbourhood that the water came from.
It is like a hydromap of Beirut.
When I was working on the composition, I moved beyond just the geography and started thinking about how the water situation affected everyone’s body and self.
So I covered the fabric with liquid latex – a texture similar to rubber – to create the appearance of human flesh.
The reason for this is that we live in the city where every day we take a shower and brush our teeth using this water, and this polluted water is coming into our bodies.
So I wanted the work to provoke a reaction from whoever looked at it – just like what you see at a butcher’s, where a carcass is hung.
That was the look I was aiming for – something flesh-like.
In Lebanon, nobody really drinks the tap water.
Instead, there’s like a private water industry.
It depends on where you live and your financial situation.
Those that can afford it, so the wealthier people, they have trucks coming to their building where they fill private tanks with clean water.
It’s delivered daily or once a week or so.
You’d see these huge private water trucks going all around.
Going back to 1990, the year I was born, there was a civil war for 15 years prior to this.
This completely destroyed the infrastructural system.
This is why our tap water became undrinkable.
So I started researching and learned that when the civil war was over, the government was planning to set up different water infrastructure projects and was taking massive loans from the World Bank for these projects to provide clean water.
Despite all this, nothing really came into fruition.
Everything was at a standstill.
People realised that there was corruption within the government.
So, in October 2019, I was showing my work at a mini biennial, and people began protesting against the government.
The exhibition closed that evening to show solidarity with the protesters.
However, there was heavy rain, which went into the museum and affected the bottom half of my work.
This work was supposed to represent water and infrastructural failure, and this happened!
Go and have a look at the bottom of the work.