Arabic for ‘chain’ or ‘link’— Silsila is a multi-media project depicting Alshaibi’s 7-year cyclic journey through the significant deserts and endangered water sources of the Middle East and North African region. Through this body of work, the artist examines connections between different cultures that are under threat of displacement, recognizing shared global issues that need to be addressed.
Inspired by the great 14th-century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, Alshaibi loosely followed his ancient paths through the present-day Middle East and North Africa, to the islands of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, a nation slated to be the first to “disappear” by rising tides, and onto Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, another island on the brink of extinction with.
