In the Shadow of Water
In the Shadow of Water is a research project looking to uncover the relationship between, land, water and power, in the Volta River Basin in present-day Ghana and Burkina Faso. Using maps and surveys relating to soil, relief and geographic data on the basin, conducted as research before the construction of the Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam, the project presents a remapped portrait of the Volta Basin.
The work considers maps as a narrative tool. It investigates how they also operate as instruments of power, and rearrange people and centres of culture, by redistributing resources including water access, forest coverable, arable land and important trade routes. The act of delamination and segmenting spaces as a way of building relational meaning becomes the main tool for narrating the present-day conditions of the basin as affected by the dam. It brings attention to the extreme changes that occurred in the Volta Basin, including the loss of cultural centres and natural resources, by isolating and relating to new regions.
The work also falls into a large research interest into the nature of power in post-colonial national states. Here, it looks at how water becomes an unnatural element advancing modernist power through technology.