Talk with Heba Amin on December 4, 2021 about her art and her installation “Operation Sunken Sea”.

The continents of Africa and Europe are connected by a long and often painful history. This has repeatedly given rise to politically shaped visions of the future for a coexistence. Today, the question of a visionary idea to create a positive joint future for the neighbouring continents of Africa and Europe is particularly important. What are the latest visions? Which existed in the past? With the three-part series « Afropa » we want to get to know and discuss current and past visions of the future, and the motivations behind them for Africa and Europe, together with artists and writers.

As a prelude to our series, we welcome the Cairo-based artist Heba Y. Amin to M.Bassy to learn more about her installation « Operation Sunken Sea » displayed at the Biennale 2018 in Berlin.

Context: In the 1920s – at the height of the European colonisation of Africa – the German architect Hermann Sörgel came up with the idea of drying out the Mediterranean Sea by building a huge dam. Thus, as a result the connection between the continents should make it easier for Europe to conquer new living space beyond the Mediterranean. He described his vision of a newly created continent, which he considered pacifistic and called it « Atlantropa ». The artist Heba Amin, who was born in Cairo and lives in Berlin, exposes the megalomaniac fantasies of Sörgel and his era in her installation “Operation Sunken Sea”. Part of her examination of the topic was intensive research. In conversation with Heba Amin, we want to get to know her artistic approach to the topic of Atlantropa.

The Egyptian artist Heba Y. Amin’s project, « Operation Sunken Sea », 2018, was well suited for “We don’t need another hero,” the iteration of the Berlin Biennale, which opened June 9, 2018. With a room-wide installation, Amin imagines herself as the mastermind of a bureaucratic plan to drain the Mediterranean Sea—a singular solution to the crises of terrorism and immigration in the Middle East and Africa. With an air of autocracy, her project exposes long-standing colonial convictions, as well as the inherent bias and violence of power.

OPERATION SUNKEN SEA is an attempt to flip a historical narrative and to place myself at its center as a radical act. I recently discovered « Atlantropa », which was a proposal for a giant engineering project to drain the Mediterranean Sea, devised by a German architect named Herman Sörgel in the 1920s. He believed that uniting Europe and Africa as one continent could create the resources needed to rival the economic power of Asia and the Americas. It was a techno-utopian idea, typical of the early twentieth century, when people really believed that technology could solve the world’s problems—or Europe’s, at least.
« …When I looked into « Atlantropa » further, I discovered that many other people had proposed similar ideas at around roughly the same time. Jules Verne was one of the first; his last novel, Invasion of the Sea, is about French colonizers who channel the Mediterranean into the Sahara Desert and run up against North African tribes. Shortly after it was published in 1905, a few other French and German geographers devised their own versions. Ultimately, they all use Africa’s resources to rebuild Europe’s strength. Of course, none of them are pitted as colonial projects; they’re portrayed as projects of peace and as a coming-together of the two continents, which is funny.

I became really fascinated by these ownership claims to the Mediterranean Sea, which carries so many histories and belongs to so many cultures. Who were these megalomaniacal men who felt that it was theirs to control? Where does that entitlement come from, and what does it feel like? I thought it’d be interesting to replicate that viewpoint, but from the other side. What would happen if these projects were proposed by an African Arab woman who used the exact same logic and the same constructs—how would that read?

I wanted to embody these men. I’m plagiarizing their ideas, drawings, and plans, and I’m restaging their portraits, putting myself in their place. In turn, I am claiming their stories and erasing them from history. I recently gave my inaugural speech in Malta, where Operation Sunken Sea was first staged in the exhibition “Dal Bahar Madwarha” (The Island is What the Sea Surrounds) for Valletta 2018, and I’ve been researching dictators’ speeches, trying to understand their mannerisms, gestures, and language. I believe that a masculinist, patriarchal spirit is fundamental to these colonialist projects and attitudes.

The installation itself has a bureaucratic, old-world feel, with dictatorial motifs and props mixed in. The flags that flank my desk are emblazoned with the project’s insignia, which is derived from a map of the Mediterranean Sea by Persian geographer Al-Istakhri in a tenth-century Islamic manuscript. Many of these old manuscripts illustrated the sea as a positive space and everything around it as negative. It was wonderful to discover this reversal. It also speaks so well to why so many artists in the Middle East have research-based practices. We suddenly have access to many archives we couldn’t access before, and we can now investigate our own histories and do our own anthropological studies. For those of us who have been colonized, I believe this is how we break the stronghold—by rewriting history. »— As told to Juliana Halpert for artforum about Heba Amin´s installation »Operation Sunken Sea«.

Heba Y. Amin (born 1980 in Cairo, Egypt) is a visual artist, researcher and lecturer, who now lives and works in Berlin. She studied in the USA and in Berlin and teaches at Bard College Berlin. Her work has been exhibited, among others, at the Dak’Art Biennale 2016, the Marrakesh Biennale – Parallel Projects 2016, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Kunstverein in Hamburg. Her installation « Operation Sunken Sea » was also shown at the Berlin Biennale 2018.

Only with reservations: reservation@m-bassy.org
immunization or recovery is required to attend the opening.

COVID-19 requires a new way of interacting during your exhibition visit. Therefore, we ask you not only for your own protection, but that of fellow visitors and our employees as well, to always act responsibly and to strictly adhere to the following safety measures protective and hygienic measures
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The series AFROPA is supported by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.
The M.Bassy Program is supported by the Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg.

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