Artist and researcher Ameneh Solati presents a performance lecture that explores the wetlands of southern Iraq as dynamic political landscapes where environmental, social, and historical forces intertwine. Moving between past and present, Solati traces a continuum of ecological violence and resistance.

Part of BEK Symposium The Only Lasting Truth is Change 2025: Voice, Seed, Brutality.

In this performance lecture, Solati examines the wetlands of southern Iraq as more than mere sites of cultural or ecological richness, but as a political arena where environmental, political, and social forces converge – positioning the wetlands as both witnesses to and agents within a protracted struggle for justice. She oscillates between key moments in the past and present of the wetlands, using a selection of archival findings, field recordings, maps, images, documents, testimonies, and satellite imagery to reveal a continuum of ecological violence. Interwoven throughout are reflections on the abstractions, erasures, distortions, and limitations within the very materials displayed.

Ameneh Solati
Ameneh Solati is a research-based artist and architect. Her practice investigates the spatial manifestations of power and resistance within marginalised spaces and geographies. Her writing includes Wetlands of Resistance (e-flux Architecture, 2023), and her work has been exhibited at Stroom in The Hague (2025), Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2024) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021). She leads a design studio at the Design Academy Eindhoven and serves as an editor-at-large at Failed Architecture. Solati holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Royal College of Art in London.