Few issues encompass the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century like water scarcity. Food production, climate change, forced migration, military conflicts and other critical issues are connected by anxiety over water supplies. Life simply can’t exist without fresh water, and billions of people are struggling for access. Further, our increasingly inhospitable world has shown through drought, flooding and other ecological disasters just how quickly livable land can be snatched away from large populations.
Imperiled water resources is one of the themes in “Silsila,” a series of photographs and videos by Sama Alshaibi that will be exhibited this spring at Ayyam Gallery, London, and which are included in a new monograph, Sand Rushes In, published this spring by Aperture.
“Silsila” is an Arabic word meaning chain or link. The series grew from Alshaibi’s interests in “the root causes of war.” An American citizen of Iraqi and Palestinian heritage, Alshaibi has lived in Arizona since accepting a teaching position at University of Arizona in 2006. Early in her tenure there, she noted that experts from states in the Middle East were traveling to Arizona to study water management and city planning. Through research she understood that water is a factor that shapes political and social conflicts. “It’s really about a hoarding practice,” Alshaibi says. “It’s human nature to try to survive for yourself and the immediate group around you.”
