Work by Farhana Satu / Installation photo by Anh Nguyen.
The works featured in this exhibition were developed in Magnum Foundation’s Photography Expanded: Heat Fellowship, which supports new photographic storytelling about the climate crisis and the inextricable relationship of communities to land.
This Open Hours is hosted by featured artist Zumrad Mirzalieva. There will be an artist talk at 6:00 – 7:00PM ET.
Come see the exhibition during this open hours event for visitors:
Thursday, March 19, 2025 | 5:00 - 8:00 PM ET
59 East 4th St, 7W | New York, NY 10003
From the dried-up Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, Zumrad Mirzalieva portrays a former port town living in the wake of overextraction, still reverberating with the echoes of a lost sea. In Ghana, Ofoe Amegavie recalls learning how his grandfather’s home in the Volta River Basin was washed away by the ocean in the 1980’s. Following the upwards path of the river, he uncovers his country’s long history of environmental displacement. On the Bagerhat River in Bangladesh, rising salinity levels and persistent flooding are damaging women’s health, a process reflected in Farhana Satu’s eroded portraits. And along the Teesta river in Sikkim, northeast India, Kunga Tashi Lepcha honors the spiritual and ecological knowledge that has sustained his community’s decades-long resistance to the hydroelectric projects devastating their sacred lands.
Across four bodies of water—each transformed by power, extraction, and the shadows of colonialism—these photographers honor the people and landscapes that, through it all, remain.
About the artist
Photo by Joe Habben/ Fabrica Research Center
Zumrad Mirzalieva is a visual artist, researcher and cultural programmer working with photography and moving image. Her research explores themes of agency, solidarity, ecology and extraction. She is the Program and Development Director of the Davra Research Collective, a recent resident at Fabrica Research Centre, Delfina Foundation and a Magnum Foundation Photography Expanded: Heat Fellow. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Innovation from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she focused on exploring the transformative potential of art in driving positive social change.
About the talk
In this talk, Zumrad will present her project Through Sands and Dreams, developed in collaboration with communities in the Aral Sea region, which challenges dominant disaster-focused narratives surrounding Moynaq. Together, we will discuss how to approach ecological devastation beyond narratives of loss, and how photography can function as a form of myth-making through staged and collaborative practices that explore how imagined futures can reclaim narrative agency after ecological and political extraction.
This exhibition is made possible the Rosenthal Family Foundation, the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Foundation, and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.
Magnum Foundation is in an elevator building and has a restroom that is wheelchair accessible and gender-neutral. For access requests or questions, please contact events@magnumfoundation.org. Masks are currently appreciated, but not required.
