Resting on a pedestal is the rusting steel structure with dual front openings, from which sheets of photo paper emerge to reveal images that trace flowing, murky waters that gush out of sewage outputs. Inspired by his formative experiences in the industrialized, marshy mudflats of the Sulaibikhat and Al Doha coastlines of Kuwait, just north of Kuwait City, the installation embodies the coagulating narratives — personal, ecological, and industrial - that congeal at the pit of sewage outpours.
Intertidal is a photographic installation that explores the entanglements between industrial run-offs and coastal ecosystems in Tubli Bay, Bahrain. Algal bloom, mangrove branches, sewage water, mud, and salt create otherworldly evolving textures.
The exhibition brings together encounters from over eight years of Motawa’s treks along the Doha and Sulaibikhat coastal areas, tracing interwoven narratives of industry and toxicity across Kuwait’s marshlands. Oscillating between dreamlike, wanton vignettes and the industrial corporeality of human intervention, the project foregrounds six east-to-west water desalination plants and outflows along Kuwait’s northern coastline.
These infrastructures frame the abandoned American military camp and form a geographic triangulation between the demolished Entertainment City theme park, Doha Nature Reserve, and the newly constructed causeway that bridges the densely populated city to this swampy, neglected landscape.
Akkaz Collective operates as a test kitchen for alternative histories, oral histories, urban studies, ecology, speculative futures, and critical theory. The collective has presented installations, printed publications, and photographic works at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2023), PhMuseum Days (Italy), and Jameel Art Centre (Dubai).
Video, sound, and photographic work
The Sultan Gallery, 2023
Reserve: Redacted is a project concerned with the aftermath of the Doha Dash—an accidental fire-turned-explosion that occurred at the (now abandoned) American military base Camp Doha in Kuwait in 1991, after the Gulf War had officially ended. Considered one of the most destructive self-inflicted accidents in U.S. military history, the explosion resulted in extensive contamination from depleted uranium.
As a consequence, the adjacent Doha Natural Reserve was sealed off for years. In 2001, large-scale remediation efforts were undertaken, during which the area’s topsoil was overturned and the contaminated terrain removed.
Video and sound work
Ongoing
Ongoing film and sound project exploring intertidal ecologies and sonic surveillance. The current research phase focuses on architecture and listening practices across species.
Filmed across Manama, Bahrain and Dungeness, UK.
azizmotawaphoto@gmail.com
Aziz has shown work at The Sultan Gallery, (Kuwait), Al Riwaq, (Bahrain), Venice Biennale of Architecture, (Italy), Phmuseum Days, (Italy) and has presented talks at Jameel Art Centre, (UAE) in collaboration with the Nieuw Instituut, Rotterdam, Bayt Al Mamzar, (UAE), and Masaha Studio, (Kuwait) and Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE). Aziz was also a visiting co-instructor at Kuwait University’s photography program and collaborated on curriculum design (2022-2023). He is founding director of Akkaz Collective and managing editor of SONDUKE magazine.
2024 Between the Tides, NYUAD Gallery, UAE
2024 The Nest, Al Riwaq, Bahrain
2024 Reality and its Shadow, Al Riwaq, Bahrain
2023 ‘Ala Taraf Lisan Al Ard, Sultan Gallery, *
2023 Phmuseum Days, Bologna, Italy
2023 ‘Beyond the Scattering Horizon’ Venice Biennale of Architecture, Italy
2023 ‘One end: Always Present,’ Al Riwaq Bahrain
2022 ‘At the Edge’ Bin Matar House, Bahrain
2018 Re-use, The Scientific Center, Kuwait
2017 ‘Absence,’ Visual Therapy Gallery, Kuwait *
2017 The Nest, Al Riwaq, Bahrain
2025 – Curated film screening program, Ard Institute, Cairo, Egypt
2025 – Ecocriticism & the Lens, lecture, Kuwait University, Kuwait
2024 – SONDUKE Magazine launch (Focal Point), Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
2024 – Akkaz Collective, Counter Histories roundtable, Jameel Art Centre, Dubai, UAE
2024 – Moderator, Mohammad Sharraf photobook launch, Al Riwaq, Bahrain
2023–2024 – Visiting co-instructor, Photography Program, Kuwait University, Kuwait
2023 – Mudflats and Outfalls, symposium presentation (Water Cycles: Design Conversations), Jameel Art Centre, Dubai, UAE
2023 – Radical Zines & Photography on the Peripheries, Studio Masaha, Kuwait
2023 – Artists Majlis, Al Riwaq, Bahrain
2023 – Regional Photo Books discussion, Al Riwaq, Bahrain & Studio Khemiae, Kuwait
2023 – Artist talk, Sultan Gallery, Kuwait
2023 – Archiving the Future, talk and presentation, Al Riwaq, Bahrain
2022 – Landscapes as Social Product, talk and presentation, Al Riwaq Gallery, Bahrain
2022 – At the Edge, artist talk, Bin Matar House, Bahrain
2019-2020 – Nuqat Cultural Conference, organizing team engagement program, oversaw cultural programming across six Arab cities,
Akkaz Collective (to be published in 2026)
Kuwait,
Graphic design by Hamad Al Mujeem
Size: 24 x 17 cm
This publication explores the intertidal mudscapes of Kuwait’s Sulaibikhat and Doha Bays as sites of ecological, industrial, and mnemonic entanglement. Drawing from posthumanist theory and political ecology, the project traces the shifting materialities of mud, brine, and waste as portals into broader histories of militarization, extractive industry, and environmental decay. Through diaristic fieldwork, archival imagery, and collaborative conversations with ecologists and historians, the work maps a counter-cartography that resists colonial and state-driven narratives of development. The essay considers how non-human agents—mudskippers, algae, pollutants—bear witness to and survive in poisoned habitats. In doing so, it reimagines the muddy coastlines not as peripheral wastelands, but as contested, living archives. Situated at the intersection of affect, materiality, and posthuman care, this inquiry proposes the mudflat as both a space of loss and a generative terrain for ecological imaginaries beyond fixed borders, human exceptionalism, or nostalgic belonging.
Photographs by Aziz Motawa
Bahrain 2017
A Possibility of a Cheap Ecology is a collaborative publication by Civil Architecture and Aziz Motawa, printed on newsprint and distributed across Bahrain as part of Al Riwaq’s NEST Festival (2017). The project examines the latent potential of public parks forming around simple infrastructures — a bench, a floodlight — and traces how informal green spaces emerge across Bahrain through water run-offs, agricultural land, natural springs, abandoned palm groves, and coastal rest stops through photographs and field observations.
Akkaz Collective (self published)
Kuwait, 2023
Graphic design by Hamad Al Mujeem
Size: 24 x 17 cm
This collaborative publication between Aziz Motawa and Malak Al Suwaihel focus on areas in Kuwait’s geographic and geological scape through expeditious and detailed referenced research accompanied with images and maps. Such areas include; Sulaibikhat, Doha, Ras ‘Ushairij, Umm Al-Namil, and Shuwaikh.
Challenging the conventional structure of a research document, oral histories and the efforts of local journalists precede any didactic, mostly Western textual introduction/perception to a Kuwait Bay.
Following Kuwait’s Sulaibikhat and Doha coastlines (Kuwait Bay) this research-based and associated visual project retraces these isolated and misused spaces while unearthing the historical and social underpinnings of how these landscapes were and continue to be shaped.
Akkaz Collective (self published)
Kuwait, 2023
Graphic design by Hamad Al Mujeem
Size: 30 x 19 cm
Ala Taraf Lisan Al’Arth is a visual documentation through the lens of Aziz Motawa capturing the last eight years of his treks along the Doha and Sulaibikhat coastal areas and their interwoven narratives of industry and toxicity that play out in these derelict marshy stretches of Kuwait. Oscillating between dream-like, wanton vignettes and the industrialized corporeality of human intervention, this visual project foregrounds the six East to West water desalination plants and outpours along the northern coastal lines of Kuwait, which frame the abandoned American military camp, and geographic triangulation of the now demolished Entertainment City theme park, Doha’s nature reserve, and the newly constructed causeway that bridges the densely populated city to this swampy, neglected geography.
Design and Creative direction by Hamad Al Mujeem
2024
SONDUKE (صندوق), an independent Arab-based platform, returns with Issue 5—spotlighting experimental and industrial art and sound from the region and beyond. This issue features interviews and spotlights with artists including Deena Abelwahed, Corin Ileto, Manuka Honey, Myriam Boulos, and Yumna Al-Arashi, alongside in-depth features on Noor Abed, Sholeh Asgary, and Fatalism. This issue also delves into Crystal Clear, a group exhibtiion curated by Studio Salsil showcasing work by Ahmad Makia, Mohammed Al Faraj, Haneen Sidahmed, Amad Ansari, and Dima Srouji.
Sara Al Zeer
Akkaz Collective (self published)
Research,editing, and production by: Aziz Motawa
Designed by Hamad Al Mujeem
2023
The book is a series of experimental stories merging history, archaeology, and fictioning centered around Akkaz Island—now part of Kuwait’s industrial port—these stories evoke the remnants of a landscape transformed by rapid urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s. Specifically, they focus on a small, inaccessible roundabout within Shuwaikh, the last remaining mound of seven known as 'tells,' which hold archaeological significance. French archaeologist Jacqueline Gachet-Bizollon’s work in the 1990s uncovered seven stratigraphic layers, revealing evidence of ancient domestic life, animal husbandry, early writing, a Sassanid Dakhma, a church, and Abbasid coins, revolutionizing Kuwait’s historical narrative. This anthology fuses these discoveries with fiction—narratives inspired by Gachet-Bizollon’s descriptions—that imagine voices from the past, from specters of history to otherworldly witnesses, inviting us to explore Kuwait’s layered historical landscape through storytelling and visual interpretation.
Secret Thread is a self-published photobook by Aziz Motawa, published through Akkaz Collective. Printed on newsprint, it assembles sensory impressions from solitary walks along Kuwait’s coastlines in 2020.