In the near future, rising sea levels submerge large swathes of the United Kingdom underwater, a diminishing island cannibalised by its own violent borders and reclaimed by the waters it once ruled. Encroaching wetlands render the land unmappable and unknowable, edges become untraceable. Radical practices of self governance, intercommoning and decentralised economies reemerge from the waters’ depths.

This creates an opening, an opportunity, optimal conditions for insurgency. Strategies of tecnopolitics, hydraulic engineering and weather manipulation create a new terrain to shift power. New structures of solidarity and knowledge transmission between the UK and the mesopotamian marshes allow groups to communicate through a water cycle: seizing the clouds, controlling the rain, and reappropriating oil pipelines.

All water is finite and connected.

The term Nar Marratu translates from Akkadian to ‘Bitter River’ and was used in ancient Babylon to refer to the cosmic ocean, water encircling the world. In this speculative installation, Sarah Al-Sarraj presents a future, a large-scale panorama, depicting newly formed, interconnected communities in wetlands in disparate geographies. Drawn in graphite on canvas, the work wraps around the walls of Eastside Projects’ second gallery, offering a glimpse into an imagined future world where climate crisis has allowed new configurations of power,  community and environmental stewardship to emerge.

Sarah Al-Sarraj (b. 1997) is a visual artist and cultural worker based between Pittsburgh (US) and London (UK). Her work centres on worldbuilding as a creative and critical process, where painting and immersive technologies are understood as portals to other worlds. Predicated on the belief that our world was designed in service of imperial violence, she builds new lifeworlds rooted in land, spirit, and ancestry. Currently working with game engines, she is interested in appropriating military simulation technologies to build uncolonisable realms inspired by Global Majority knowledge systems and emerging quantum thought.

Her creative practice is informed by working in movements, at organisations such as Forensic Architecture, the Inclusive Mosque Initiative and Healing Justice London. She is inspired by the tangible material potential of visionary practice in global liberation movements and she occasionally lends her hands to illustration and graphic design for various groups.

Sarah has shown her work in the UK and internationally. In 2022, her comic book ‘Sinkhole’ was selected for New Contemporaries. In 2023, she received a grant from Arts Council England to develop an animation practice, through which she began collaborating with the Mechatronic Library, a collective of intersectional feminist worldbuilders and immersive artists. Her first solo show opened at Two Queens Gallery in 2024 and she has since held solo presentations of her work at Mimosa House, the World Museum, and Longsight Art Space. In an attempt to broaden the scope of her work, she has given presentations at the UK’s National Space Centre and the World Museum. She was recently selected as a finalist for the CIRCA Prize 2025. She is currently undertaking her MFA at Carnegie Mellon University.