Birth of Recession- ميلاد الانحسار

The Birth of Recession explores the predicament of "aqueous memory" in the face of industrial desertification, depicting a scene that merges black comedy with a recently accelerated temporal paradox. The work utilizes "celebration" as a means to monitor the moment when water sources—the very foundations of civilizations—transform into ruins. It commemorates the anniversary of the beaver's disappearance from the banks of the "Khabur River" (a vital tributary of the Euphrates); creatures that were once the ecological engineers of these banks before being driven out by drought and pollution.

At the heart of the scene, a local resident carries a birthday cake alongside a beaver—not as a living being, but as an embodied memory—in an absurd ritual that honors absence rather than presence. In the background, plumes of smoke rise from primitive oil extraction and refining operations, which acted as a catalyst for the demise of this tributary. The flow of water has been replaced by the viscosity of tar, turning the lifeblood of the land into a trench of parched ruins.

The emotional depth of the work lies in a "personal" retrieval of childhood years spent along the Khabur, witnessing its gradual recession from a vital current into hollow, soulless spaces. Here, "ruins" become the inevitable result of water depletion and the "scars" of oil upon the banks, redefining the "environment" not as a sanctuary for nature, but as a stage for liquidation and decay. The work poses a bitter question: How can celebration become our only tool for documenting loss? And how do habitats turn into silent ruins when nature is traded for resources that leave behind nothing but ash and salt flats