Rana Beiruti

Re-rooting

Re-rooting is a group exhibition of projects that highlight interventions, dialogues, and reflections, conducted at a local scale, that subvert and transform systems and pre-conditioned understandings of the three most pressing concerns in Jordan today; water politics, agro-ecology, and extractive building practices.

The constellation of works presented attempts to untangle the complex histories that make up the current crisis of economy and ecology, not only in an effort to denunciate them but also to showcase hacks, diversions, and solutions. They look at forms of self-determination and autonomy performed by local communities as a rejection of normalized exploitative and colonial models.

Each in their own way, the works presented unveil discourses on time, memory, disappearance, and, more violently, theft and erasure. They play on predicted and imagined futures to reflect on the loss of resources, land, seeds, knowledge, power, and agency. Within this “earth memory”, we are learning about the power of indigenous practices and knowledge, as well as storytelling and mythology, in providing cues to alternatives for reversing the current state of “unlivability” characterized by exhausted geographies, imposed scarcities, unjust economic systems, and an irreversible degradation of natural landscapes.

You might be searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots – Jalāl Ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

Re-rooting is about charting and redirecting those intricate and complex systems which operate invisibly and underground, carrying within them the histories and memories which continue to feed and nourish our existing realities. The process of re-rooting is not a nostalgic “return to our roots,” but a process of building new channels of connection with the earth.

Within the process of re-rooting is a process of re-routing. The works presented abandon notions of “earth-keeping” and sustainability to adopt processes that are regenerative, reversible, and biophilic when it comes to building our habitats and rewilding our cities. Under these new proposed ideas, ethical foraging and gathering become forms of resistance, and cooking and eating become performative acts, with each recipe becoming a pillar of cultural memory and exchange.

The exhibition acts as an aggregator of the collective local voices, showcasing real-world interventions as well speculative and reflective works done by artists, anthropologists, chefs, designers, farmers, foragers, scientists, bakers, nutritionists, photographers, and filmmakers who place artistic practice at the heart of what they do.

On Food as Resistance:

Central to the ecological crisis is a power struggle over the land and its most valuable resource: food.

One cannot talk about agro-ecology in Jordan without understanding the history of wheat, a crop that was once so valuable and central to our cultural and societal cohesion. Once a staple crop, heat has now become the reference for understanding how neo-liberal policies, under the guise of efficiency, collaboration, trade, and economic development, can render whole communities obsolete, and turn our cultural wealth into archival material, or worse, imported goods.

Meanwhile, activists and creatives have taken matters into their own hands to resist the globalized, colonial, industrial, and commercial food system; whether by mobilizing land and communities to revive the annual wheat harvest, forging new channels between farmers and markets, or reviving practices surrounding the “commons”.

These acts remind us that resistance comes in all forms: literal or speculative, catalyzing or preserving, and individual or systemic.

Zikra for Popular Learning –– Installations at the Re–rooting exhibition in the Main Building at Darat al Funun.

Photograph: Wheat harvest with Zikra for Popular Learning, Amman, 2020.

Reproduction of a bag carrying wheat, distributed as ‘aid’ by the United States, and placed opposite to a pile, or baydar, of locally-grown, native wheat that was harvested locally by Zikra for Popular Learning in 2021.


Whole wheat bread, commercial white bread, bread made from 100% local bread, bread dye, vitamin pre-mix.

A baydar, or pile of wheat, calligraphy by Al Arrab, and video excerpt from the film ‘Harvest Moon’, directed by Rama Ayasrah, and produced by Mariam Salim and Asmahan Bkerat, with concept and research by Lama Khatieb and Rabee’ Zureikat.


Zikra for Popular Learning –– and their community of volunteers harvesting a plot of land near City Mall in Amman, 2020.


Guided by my interest in craft, material, and the land, I immersed myself during the pandemic in studying local geographies. It was clear to me that a network of factors—geopolitical, social, colonial, industrial, and commercial—bolster the misconception that our land is empty and that we must live in scarcity. After participating in the wheat harvest organized by Zikra for Popular Learning, and embarking on a collaborative research journey to study the culinary potential of foraging edible native plants, I found myself inspired not only by thinkers and doers who were taking on such complicated and interrelated issues in ingenious ways, but also by a renewed understanding of abundance and potential.

Mirna Bamieh –– Gestures of Enchantment, 2020.

Thought: Resilience
During the intifada, a potato was used as a tool by Palestinian youth to debilitate the occupation machine with a simple act: they would stick nails into it, throw it in front of soldier cars and run. The soldiers would mistake the potatoes for stones and drive over them. The nails would flatten the wheels, causing an immediate shift in street power.

Acts such as mobilizing a community to plant wheat, experimenting with native ingredients in the kitchen, imagining multispecies ecosystems, transforming the fertility of the land, and digging through archives to contemplate alternative structures and systems; these are all material interventions that take place in real space and time outside the confines of the gallery’s representational space. They unfold in the field, in the forest, or in the kitchen and have a real impact on the communities and lands they serve. They are solid, sober, contextualized, symbolic, critical, and representative acts, but can also be seen as studied, nuanced, and poetic. In that sense, they are acts that are embedded in contemporary artistic practice, and that draw from the methods of representation and expression characteristic of the art world.

Re–rooting, therefore, was not initially conceived of as a series of artworks by artists but as a compilation of acts done by individuals and civil society, transposed into the exhibition space. Seeking not to make void statements that simply critique or reflect our present reality, this exhibition is an exploration of the meaning of intervention-as-art and showcases these real-world interventions and design solutions conducted at a local scale that confront this global catastrophe with bold actions of self-determination. Similarly, this publication collates the voices of collaborators and participants who not only share the historical context of their research but also give insight into their personal journeys and interventions as a result of the new understandings they have developed.

Karmah Tabbaa –– Wild Mouneh, 2022.

‘Wild Mouneh’ is an installation that investigates the possibilities of sourcing and producing food using available local plants. Six wild edible ingredients, in picture, in real form, or in their transformation, are composed alongside a printed guide to a wilder food path.

Ayla Hibri –– The Alchemy of Juniper, Akkar, Lebanon, 2021.

The photographer documents the Lebanese juniper tree, known in Arabic as lezzeb, an evergreen conifer that grows at altitudes above 1000m and accounts for 23% of Lebanon’s woodland. These sturdy trees with ecological significance and incredibly high tolerance to harsh environments produce the juniper berry, a primary botanical needed to distill gin.

Hussein Alazaat –– Jordanian Food Stickers, 2022.

This installation is composed of speculative and fictional labels that he designed featuring a clear connection between the land, vernacular visual culture, and the influence of consumption.

On The Narrative of Empty Lands:

Approaching the land with political and economic aspirations in mind reduces it and its agricultural resources to mere commodities to be extracted and traded. A land is only considered useful insofar as it is “productive”, and in our postcolonial reality, only if it is “green”.

This narrative that our land is somehow lacking informs an extractive, fear-based, and scarcity-driven connection to it. Re-writing this narrative involves acts of advocacy, intervention, and a careful consideration of indigenous practices and alternative ways of engaging with and learning from the land.

Together, these acts uncover historic and often spiritual and bodily connections to the Earth.

Deema Dabis –– Ba’ali, 2022.
This installation is an exploration of the concept of ba’ali, a word from the 3rd millennium BCE, most closely translating to ‘wild’ or ‘rainfed’, and used familiarly referring to ba’ali olive trees.

Rawan Baybars –– Empty Lands, 2022.

This installation ‘Empty Lands’ is composed of three glass containers that carry three types of soil from the same plot of land, each with different constituents. The first is an untreated sample of soil, the second is transitioning through composting green and brown material, and the third is the final “fixed” sample with more organisms, sprouts, and living elements. The gesture of turning organic materials into healthy soil then back into food is a revolutionary act.

Taghmees –– Learning Soils, 2022.

This presents reproductions of a selection of these textbooks, showcasing the toxicity of language and ideas that have been influential in shaping our logic and understanding over generations, exposing perhaps the deepest colonization of all—the colonization of our minds— which has in turn permitted the colonization of our land, food, relationships, and ways of knowing and being.

On Archives and Earth Memory:

As we yearn for a time that predates our current state of devastation, conversations around ecology are intimately tied to themes of memory
and loss. In these works, archives—whether they take the form of documents, objects, spaces, buildings, cities, or the Earth itself—become vital tools for revealing new understandings about the colonial and extractive systems that have led us here. In analyzing, intervening in, and reinterpreting these repositories of information, we can begin mapping out root causes of the ecological crisis that need re-rooting.

Eman Haram –– Mother of Oranges, Jaffa, 2022.

Using archival material as a starting point, Eman Haram invites audiences into her years-long research on the Jaffa orange and the history of its intentional colonization. Artworks are presented alongside primary research material, inviting conversation on the importance of treating archives as living compilations, open to be interpreted and intervened on in order to liberate oneself from hegemonic, and often false, narratives.

Eman Haram –– Mother of Oranges, Jaffa, 2022.

Eman Haram –– The Orange Grove, 2019-2020.

Between the lens of the camera and the orientalist,
The land was lost.

It turned into an object dissected to produce knowledge
and assumptions.

The land was rendered as proof that life – exists here.
But... who needs this proof?

Between the lens and the land your imagination is put in
an orientalist’s frame – or the photograph’s frame.

Sarah Risheq –– if the archive could speak, 2022.

Khaled Al-Bashir –– Un-forming Zionism, 2021.

Architecture is more than just an inert form; it is a ‘happening’ that emerges from networks of flow between people and places. As we move to understand it as such, the building becomes an archive; a register of the socio-political forces that bring it to being.

Khaled Al-Bashir –– Un-forming Zionism, 2021.

On Extractive Building:

We speak of the relationship between humans and nature as if the two are not one and the same. Within this duality of human-versus-nature is an inherent violence. As humans increasingly migrate to urban centers, we experience a growing alienation from the land, from other species, and ultimately, from one another.

Critical of various extractive building practices, these works highlight the parallels between architecture and violence. Modern building practices are not rooted in the belief that we belong to nature; instead, they view nature as a resource to be exploited and violated.

TAYYŪN Research Studio –– Urban Pasture, 2022.

While the idea of urban shepherds guiding their flocks through the streets of Amman carries some absurdity, the city was once a popular ground for grazing. Building a practice around creating alternative urban spaces, TAYYŪN Research Studio imagines a city in which coexistence with other species becomes a reality.

TAYYŪN Research Studio –– Insect Hotel, 2022.

Mais al Azab –– Cross Section II,Cross Section III, 2017-2022.

This work repurposes a palette of natural wood shavings collected from wood construction waste sites, and re- assembles them with the aim of giving this natural material a second life after its initial death or use.

Sima Zureikat –– A Court for Reed and Rush, 2018.

Following the enormity of urban growth and development over the past decade in Jordan, Sima Zureikat set out to find the “edge of Amman.” However, this futile search led to a transformation of the idea of physical borders away from something linear and towards something circular in format, where the beginning and end are hard to define.

The ancient ruins at Umm Qais and Mount Nebo serve as destination points where one can gaze upon the borders to Palestine. These etheric visions are juxtaposed within three scenes: the city landscape of downtown Amman, the mountain terrain between Jordan and the Golan Heights, and the agricultural region of the Ghor along the Jordan River.

Melika Abdel Razzak and Soraya Ghezelbash –– And help our eyes to dance, 2022.

The installation is composed of two botanical compositions, ‘Empty Palm’ and ‘Grain of World’, which, according to the artists, narrate the beauty, strength and fragility of life and death embracing plants as atmospheres. ‘Rising Sunset’ is a handmade carpet that calls our thoughts and bodies to the ground–to dance or rest our way towards enlightenment or peace.

Nujud Ashour –– Closer to Earth, 2022.

The triangular blocks were made using mud and straw employing adobe building techniques. The mortar and the front plastering were made using mud and aggregates. The top surfaces were smoothed employing an experimental approach with the tadelakt, a traditional Moroccan method for creating surface texture using lime that seals the surface and makes it waterproof.

Abeer Seikaly –– Matters of Time, 2019.

Abeer Seikaly –– THABIT: Building For Future Generations, 2022.

In ‘THABIT: Building for Future Generations’, Abeer Seikaly documents found objects that were once foreign to the Jordanian Badia, but are now becoming familiar, alongside adopted cultural objects. The work, which is set adjacent to her film ‘Matters of Time’, showcases objects that she found discarded in nature while filming in the Badia. Photographed like archival evidence, the objects come from a variety of sources.

On Water:

How does one encapsulate the fluidity of water, especially in a land that has been deprived of it? In this section, photographs and prints serve as tools for tracing imposed borders and colonial imprints, offering insights into the systemic factors underpinning the water crisis and Jordan’s pressing issues of access, scarcity, rationing, and resource depletion.

Paola Farran –– low tide: an anthology, 2022.

There is an imbalance in the movements of the tide on the shores of the Dead Sea. As time goes by and the waters inexorably recede, the Dead Sea is starting to sink.

Hareth Ramzi –– The Day the Water Came, 2019.

Nadia Bseiso –– Chapter I, Salvation Pipeline: Red Sea - Dead Sea, Jordan, 2015 - 2017.

Nadia Bseiso –– Chapter I, Salvation Pipeline: Red Sea - Dead Sea, Jordan, 2015 - 2017.

Nadia Bseiso –– The Baptism Site of Jesus Christ (Al-Maghtas), Jordan River, Jordan, 2015.