The Aral Sea
/
By Lilia Bakanova
a vanishing sea
a biodiverse habitat
a part of Silk Road route
a symbol of Soviet exploitation
a toxic wasteland
a new environmental reality
a case study in adaptation
a processual disaster
a geopolitical battleground
a global environment lesson
a nourisher
a symbol of depletion
a tourist potential
a former fishing industry hub
a collapsed economy
a mad-Max style artemia supplier
a capitalist resource for China
a hunting grounds for the UAE
an international gas consortium bypassing local employment
an undisclosed gas reserve under a dry seabed
a climate influencer
a source of airborne pollutants
a desertified void
a site of nostalgia
a source of displacement
a cultural identity marker
a logistical barrier
a lost transportation link
a hydrological feature
a salt plain
a sedimentary archive
an ossified waterbody
an atrophied ecosystem
a fossilized hope
a site of civilizations
a memory archive
a post-human relic
a distant bird’s cry
a silenced sea
a velvety touch of the desert, salty milk, superfine sand powder in the air
an open horizon
Lilia Bakanova is an artist and writer based in the UK, but her roots are Russian, Kazakh and Uzbek. Her practice focuses on relationships between landscape, memory and ecological change through text and other media.