God's Eye Sees All

Visual and material project exploring the subversion of public and private realms through the introduction of aerial imaging technologies during the Gulf War, reflecting upon contested landscapes and the homes that carry their stories.

God’s Eye Sees All is a two-part project exploring the subversion of public and private realms through the introduction of aerial imaging technologies during the first Gulf War. Aerial perspectives lensed by emerging technologies, such as GPS and satellite imagery, functioned to reaffirm the universalising imaginary perceiving desert lands as dead and empty, contouring and flattening the land and its situated cosmologies.

The project returns to these desert lands along the Kuwait-Iraq border, rearranging found stones, corrugated metal, discarded door frames and other loose materials into a carpet- the focal point of Arab domestic life; where meals are shared, gatherings are held, prayers are performed. The composition of the carpet explores the symbiotic relationship between these contested landscapes and the homes that carry their stories, reflecting upon interpersonal processes of collective remembrance, family histories, and their subsequent presentation of history as a symbol of memory. The found materials within the composition are photochemically hand-printed using liquid light emulsion, in collaboration with Kuwait City-based darkroom Studio Khemia’e.

The following stage of this project centres the Al-Qurain Martyrs Museum, formerly a family home that now stands as a memorial ground for martyrs of the first Gulf War. The home bears the scars of the battle that took place inside, on February 24th, 1991, and has been left untouched since then. The Al-Qurain house is an embodiment of the Kuwaiti phenomenon of contextualising national histories through the role each family home plays in shaping it. In the still-images captured, I draw parallels between the visual and material identities of the natural and built environment and the people that inhabit them; between landscapes, maps, homes, decay, and re-birth. 

“Our struggle is deep and vast; for we are made from the depths of the Earth.” 

- Rheim Alkadhi, Templates For Liberation