Wild Waters: Dams and Deltas After Modernity at Framer Framed, Amsterdam

The Dutch landscape is interwoven with water: a vast network of rivers, canals, aquifers and engineered waterways flowing above and beneath the ground. For centuries, inland water has been both a source of life and a persistent threat to Dutch society. In response, engineers constructed dikes, canals and storm surge barriers to protect land that lies below sea level. These infrastructures produced not only safety, but also a national mythology of mastery over a resource that doesn’t always flow in such abundance.

During the era of global modernisation, dams and river engineering came to symbolise technological progress and national development. The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970 under Gamal Abdel Nasser, brought hydroelectric power to thousands of Egyptians and transformed the Nile into an emblem of postcolonial ambition. Yet such projects have often been accompanied by displacement, ecological damage and the erasure of histories. In neighbouring Libya, the canalisation of wells enabled Italian colonial authorities to control access to water as a mechanism of dispossession, while the later abandonment of infrastructure contributed to the catastrophic floods in Derna in 2023. In occupied Palestine, the Zionist project framed through the idea of “making the desert bloom” was predicated on the extraction and redirection of underground waterways tied to longstanding traditions, agricultural practices and oral histories.

The exhibition Wild Waters traces the entanglements between water, colonial expansion and territorial exploitation through works by artists Jumana Emil Abboud, Suzette Bousema, Ewa Ciepielewska & Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Giovanni Giaretta, Adelita Husni-Bey, Anna Moreno, Suat Öğüt, Eunice Pais, Ashfika Rahman, Morteza Soorani, and Abdo Zin Eldin. Across their practices, ancient myths and contemporary struggles converge in the deltaic cultures of Bangladesh and the Ebro Delta, as well as along the Meuse, Vistula, Tajo and Tigris.

Floods and hydraulic interventions emerge as tools of political erasure: from the submerged Kurdish town of Hasankeyf, to the Shatt al-Arab where the Tigris meets the Karun, communities face pollution, ecological collapse, and forced displacement from lands long regarded as the cradle of agriculture. As the climate crisis intensifies, access to fresh water is increasingly threatened, while infrastructures continue to redirect and commodify this vital resource in service of political and economic power.