The exhibition A Sounding of the Earth presents Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid, whose work explores the many intertwined past and present histories of the Arab Gulf. Linking ancient artefacts with today’s oil industry, Farid traces how ecosystems, material cultures and social structures are shaped by political forces and extractive economies, and how communities adapt and resist within these pressures.
Through large-scale sculpture and film Farid reimagines ancient protective forms and materials to address the ecological and social crises of our time. Her practice emerges from the Gulf’s landscapes, where cultural heritage is continually transformed, paralleling the pace of a rapidly changing region. In this context Farid juxtaposes artisanal and mass-produced objects, from blue faience with a 6,000-year history to polyester resin, a by-product of the 20th-century oil industry. By combining handmade and industrial objects with seemingly opposing meanings, Farid reflects a region where modernity remains deeply entangled with imperial legacies of fragmentation and exploitation.
Across the intimate shadowed space Farid presents two works linking the Gulf’s landscapes with political and spiritual narratives. Central to the exhibition is Amulets (2025), a two-part sculptural work inspired by traditions of protective symbols reimagined in materials derived from oil refinement. The piece contrasts the region’s spiritual heritage with the extractive forces that shape its present. Along the rear wall Chibayish (2022/2023) is a single-channel projection in two parts filmed in the southern Iraqi wetlands, a landscape under intense political and environmental pressure yet sustaining life and memory. Shifting between documentary and dreamlike imagery it captures daily life in the marshes today.
Together the works trace the entanglement of culture, ecology and industry, inviting us to reflect on the way histories of extraction and resilience continue to shape the present.
Press release from Copenhagen Contemporary
Image: Alia Farid. Amulets. 2025. Photography by David Stjernholm. Image courtesy of Copenhagen Contemporary
