Past Exhibition

Drawn to see(a) brings together artworks by Rozana Lee that trace connections between unfolding environmental catastrophes in two geographically distant places; here, at Kettle Park in South Ōtepoti, and Central Asia, at the former-shoreline of the Aral Sea and in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan. Lee recently spent time in Central Asia on a mobile artist and researcher residency that travelled through Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – the region where the Silk Road once passed.

Initially drawn to the region because of its histories of silk and textiles, Lee soon became interested in sites such as the Aral Sea and a landfill on the outskirts of Bishkek. Places where human actions have led to far-reaching environmental issues, with implications far beyond what people anticipated or imagined. In the Aral Sea, now known as the Aralkum Desert, exploitative irrigation projects have led to it rapidly shrinking and becoming hostile to most life forms, with hyper salinity in its pooled remanents and severe problems with toxic, wind-borne dust from areas of the exposed lake basin. The dust’s toxicity stems from contamination with chlorinated pesticides from agricultural runoff and, likely, waste from a chemical warfare plant formerly located on Vozrozhdeniya Island. Nuclear tests were also done on the island.

Similarily, Bishkek landfill is entirely open air and produces large amounts of methane. Smoke from burning within the landfill also produces pollution, and, when it’s hot, an overwhelming stench exudes from it. Polluted water leaching from the landfill threatens to contaminate the nearby Ala-Archa river and groundwater.

The landfill buried under Kettle Park is suspected to hold waste from the decomissioned gasworks of South Ōtepoti; copper, lead, zinc, cyanide, oil, coal tar and asbestos have all been detected in borehole testing, and there is potential for munitions and unexploded ordinances from the former army battery and shooting range at Ocean Beach. Building demolition materials improvised as a shell to protect the landfill are gradually being uncovered and dismantled by the rising sea, and can be found scattered across the sand dunes when walking along the beach.

Lee’s textiles and moving image works draw from each of these sites, and are made through varied processes of collecting materials and note-taking. Whether that be cotton sourced while travelling on the residency, scenes and images taken from each place with a camera, bureaucratic reports and personal written reflections on these sites and direct rubbings on fabric from the physical surfaces of their architectural and environmental features.

The geographical distance between the Aral Sea, Bishkek and the coastline of Ōtepoti seems considerable, although Lee is interested in how they are connected, sometimes in ways which exist out of sight. Networks of trade along the Silk Road linked different places in Central Asia to other ends of the world. Today, the export of waste too from countries like Aotearoa to other regions ties us to these places. Echoes of environmental exploitation, causing climate change and ecosystem collapse, further bind places and peoples, each instance offering a distinct example of a commonly held fate.

Rozana Lee would like to acknowledge all those who contributed to the exhibition: Akbota Saduakassova, Hikoyat Salimova, Hutch Wilco, Bermet Borubaeva, Iskender Aliev and the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig.

Kā mihi to Akbota and Hikoyat for sharing their writing about the Aral Sea, which can be read below.