The Vega Foundation

In Floating Sea Palace (2024), Lam draws on the folklore tale of Lo Ting, a mythical human-fish hybrid, who is believed to be the ancestor of the Hong Kong people. In Lam’s story, Lo Ting exists both in past and future form, played by pop singer Bruno Hibombo and artist Ivan Cheng, respectively. Past Lo Ting longs to return to his former home Fragrant Harbour, the phonetic translation of Hong Kong. He unknowingly summons a dragon ship, performed by vocalist and improviser Sofia Jernberg, based on a real three-story ship named the Floating Restaurant Sea Palace.

Merowe Dam in North Sudan. Maher works in a traditional brickyard fed by the waters of the Nile. Every evening, he secretly wanders off into the desert to erect a mysterious construction made of mud. Despite a disturbing wound in his lower back that seems to be eating away at his skin, he continues his labor day after day. While the Sudanese people rise to claim their freedom, his mud creation starts slowly to take a life of its own.

Alia Farid’s Chibayish examines how nature in southern Iraq has been viewed as both an accomplice and harbourer of political resistance. Filmed at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Chibayish records the artist’s interactions with three young marshland residents: Riad Samir and Jassim and Qassim Mohammed. It includes footage of the children caring for a water buffalo, describing their geography, naming members of the community, and traversing a marsh engulfed by oil infrastructure and industrial waste. Chibayish is part of a larger group of works that Farid has developed since 2018 focused on the impact of extractive industries on southern Iraq and Kuwait’s ecological and social fabric. Like her installation Palm Orchard (2022), Chibayish is an exploration of cultural identity, history, colonialism, and the right to remain.