Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan

Focuses on contemporary art and media to examine the role of visuals in environmental violence and war in Northern Kurdistan.

Extractivism--exploiting the earth for resources--has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world where ecological and humanitarian sensibilities are unprecedentedly widespread? Eray ylı argues it does so by mobilizing these sensibilities in new ways. Extractivism is no longer only about moving the earth--displacing peoples, fossils, minerals, and waters--but also leaving those who witness this violent displacement sentimentally moved.

Earthmoving conceptualizes this duality. Derived from ylı's years-long work in Northern Kurdistan, home to the world's largest stateless nation--rendered stateless by colonial policies since the nineteenth century--Earthmoving focuses on the 2010s, a decade that began with peace talks between Turkey and the Kurdish liberation movement but ended with war. The decade saw extractivism intensify in the region and images of its harm proliferate across art and media. Together with contemporary artists, ylı shows that images challenge extractivism both by making its harm visible and fostering self-reflexive and reciprocal collaboration that breaks with its valuation of the colonized and the racialized only in quantifiable and marketable terms.