social media to raise supportive awareness
and show their solidarity with the people of
Standing Rock.
Since April this year, the residents of
Standing Rock have been blocking the Dakota
Access Pipeline with their campsites in heated
opposition to construction. They have since
risen in strength, with over ninety indigenous
groups across North America joining their
protest. The Dakota Access pipeline, which
would carry crude oil under the Missouri River
reservoir, threatens the community’s main
water source and cultural sites.
While the majority of people do associate
the term “oil spill” with negativity, they
don’t always grasp the toxic ripple effect
of such disasters. By visually representing
contamination in her series Oil & Water, Dr.
Rahmani hoped to “connect the idea that
oil spills degrade water systems.” With her
artwork Dr. Rahmani captured the “deceptively
beautiful sheen” of contaminated water,
conveying the irony of how attractive “life
subsidized by the agony of the entire planet”
can seem on a surface level. “I wanted to make
something that would illustrate exactly how
water is befouled,” she explained.
In 2008, Dr. Rahmani journeyed by train
down the continent, “passing fields of corn for
ethanol shared with fields for cows.” The jarring
juxtaposition of crops being harvested for fuel
on the same land where cows (harvested for
human consumption) were feeding, created
a visual of toxicity, representing the negative
impact of our lifestyles on the planet. Travelling
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