The Red River, Tai Kwun Museum, Hong Kong. Curated by Kathryn Weir as part of Green Snake, 2024.
The Red River as an ode to the River Belus south of the city of Akka, Palestine. Here, women bathed to cleanse their bodies, heal from ailments, and pray for fertility and love. Due to the rich sands and high amounts of silica brought to the eastern Mediterranean from the north flowing Nile sands, this river was a center of worship. The same sand was extracted from the Belus to make raw glass in large furnaces in what are now archaeological sites all around Palestine. From the raw glass cubes glassblowers in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt made perfume bottles, drinking vessels, kohl bottles, and tear catchers to be used for rituals of mourning, celebration, and cleansing. This infinite cycle that exists between the land, the glass objects, and the Palestinian body are teased out in this installation through a 5 meter red glass river and a short film on the history of glass. The Red River is named after the now highly polluted Belus (Naamein). Israeli weapons factories surround the area now and the cities nearby have some of the highest rates of cancer in the world.
