We’d like to congratulate the writer and film director Pauline Dupin, and also Rakhi Sawalani who acted the main character ‘the Girl’.
Rakhi Sawalani and Pauline Dupin
We also acknowledge Geraldine Chansard, the film executive and the creator of Woman from the Mangroves, the sculpture featured in the film.
Geraldine Chansard and Pauline Dupin
On this occasion we’d also like to thank the Sharjah Institute for Heritage and the Chairman Dr Abd Aziz Al Musallam for their continuous support to the mangroves and our art campaign, Mangroves from the Water (MFTW). We thank the Institute for publishing extra issues of a special edition of Marawed magazine that focuses on the mangroves as part of Emirati Heritage.
To follow up the news about the winning film, please open these links:
Announcement for two workshops by one of MFTW’s inspiring artists, Jacqui Dreessens.
Kayak, Mangroves, Poetry
Do you like kayaking? Ever written poetry? Have you ever seen the mangrove forest on Wadawurrung Country between Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove? Come and witness first hand this incredible ecosystem that clears the water and puts oxygen in the air for all of us Beings to breathe. So hardy and yet so fragile. A different World awaits from the Water.
This is Part A of an exciting afternoon/evening: 4pm-6pm. Where the River meets the Sea – Kayak, Mangroves, Poetry
The short film ‘the Girl who Fell in Love with the Mangroves’ is to be podcasted by the Dubai Culture Authority during the ‘Al Marmoom – Film in the Desert’ festival on 10 December, 10:00pm to 12:00 pm.
Rakhi, founder of the Desert Art Collective, will represent the filmmaker Pauline Dupin and the artist Geraldine Chansard of the ‘Mangroves from the Water’ group.
Mangroves from the Water is proud to represent this appreciation certificate from the Smithsonian for their participation at the Smithsonian Folklife festival.
We would like to congratulate one of the Mangroves from the Water artists, Jacqui Dreessens for presenting Echelons: Finding a reference point for culture heritage in a mangrove ecosystem at the 46th World Conference International Council of Traditional Music and Dance.
The following statement is to express my thanks for the support of International Fieldwork in the US between 21 June and 27 July.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival highlighted my work and the Mangroves from the Water in mangrove heritage, art making and conservation. My participation was based on esteem and my knowledge in the area of mangroves; I represented the United Arab Emirates in the Living Landscape | Living Memory program at the 56th annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The program highlighted visions for a diverse and sustainable future. The second part of my fieldwork in the US was a 17 day residency at the Pilchuck Glass School where I gained glass techniques skills to support my doctoral research project.
I would like to thank Deakin University, the Pilchuck Glass School and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival curators and supporters for making the international fieldwork project a success.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival curators and supporters are:
the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation,
the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth,
the UAE Embassy in Washington, DC,
co-curators Michele Bambling and Rebecca Fenton and
Pablo Molinero Martinez, the program coordinator.
I would like to thank Deakin University for their support of my participation in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and for the financial assistance for my residency in Seattle at the Pilchuck Glass School.
Tangible benefits are as follows.
These experiences will contribute to the practice led, autoethnographic research framework of my research and will directly support two written sections in my exegesis centring on art influences and art practice.
The experiences will also influence a body of sculptural artwork using glass in multimedia art installation works.
The Mangroves from the Water research aims to highlight the plight of mangroves and wetlands globally and my experience in the US will add great benefit to the body of knowledge in this field. Artists can make an impact in finding ways to deliver scientifically factual messages that scientists may struggle to put across.
You can view my presentation on my experience in this document:
Zahidah Zeytoun Millie is all about roots: her Syrian roots, mangrove roots, and the roots she sets down in each country she moves to. As an artist and curator, she ties them together in her artwork and her activism.
Here at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, as part of the United Arab Emirates program, Zahidah leads workshops on painting mangrove trees. When I arrived at her tent, ten or so children, drawn by the inviting sight of colorful watercolor palettes, sat in a circle on the ground. In the center was a large glass jar of mangrove saplings. The children drew outlines with a watercolor marker, then softened the lines with a wet brush, and finally added a wash of watercolor from the pans. She walked around, commenting on line quality or color choice. Her own paper was covered in swirls of green and brown that coalesced into the tangled roots of a mangrove.
Zahidah’s artist website shows almost 200 mangrove watercolors. They’re visually tantalizing pieces, varied but unified. Some are more figurative while others lean abstract: mangroves naturally dance between organic body and graphic design. Sometimes she paints wet-in-wet, letting the pigment flow and blur so that the painting only implies a tree as its subject. Other paintings are crisply detailed, with bold dark strokes for the branches.
Mangroves gave Zahidah hope and purpose in a time of crisis. In 2012, when civil war broke out in Syria, she was living in the UAE.
“I was very scared about my family, my homeland,” she said. “But as an artist, you always survive with your art.” She began kayaking through the marshes in the UAE to relax, and there she found the mangroves. “I thought, okay, what can I do? There are two things—the mangroves and my country—and I linked them in one. I organized an exhibition about the mangroves. And the funds I sent to Syrian children and refugees in Syria. That was my little contribution.”
Zahidah telling her story to the children
Zahidah spent many years working as both an artist and environmental activist. When she moved to the UAE in 2000, she became interested in issues of native plant conservation and sustainable architecture. Mangroves are native to the UAE—the country has significant coastal regions, despite popular perception as a purely desert biome. Unlike many trees, mangroves thrive in saline waters. They support aquatic and terrestrial life, purify surrounding waters, and act as carbon sinks. The beautiful trees both inspire us and protect against climate change, but they are in danger. According to the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, the rate of mangrove forest loss is three to four times higher than that of terrestrial forests.
As the Syrian war raged on, Zahidah refocused. She recalled thinking, “I can’t do anything for the manmade war in my home country, but I can try to do what I have in front of me.” She involved herself fully in the cause of the mangroves. Gathering a group of fellow artists, she curated another multimedia art exhibition, Mangroves from the Water. She received funding from an environmental agency in Abu Dhabi, and her work eventually culminated in a 2017 mangrove festival.
Now, Zahidah and her family live in Australia. Upon moving, she found that Australia had the same issue of mangrove loss. Making Australian people care, however, has been more difficult. “In the UAE, I tried to work from the roots of the thing. I found a story,” she said. “But moving to Australia, I couldn’t find a story. Different politics, different history.”
She needed to find roots in Australia, something to connect the people to the trees. So she chose to expand her project, Mangroves from the Water, into a PhD at Deakin University.
“I keep trying to see what is right, what is wrong, what is going on. This is the meaning of life for me.”
Zahidah Zeytoun Millie teaches us to look closely at the world in front of us: to notice its beauty, to learn to love and protect her. Join her at the Story Majlis to see her art and learn about mangrove conservation.
Author Sophie Henry is a writing intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and an art history major at Yale University. She also studies Spanish, German, and chemistry.
Mangroves from the Water (MFTW) 