Beneath the Roots: Becoming native through mangrove teachings and wisdom

Abstract

Beneath the Roots uses the wisdom of mangroves to investigate the naturalization of humans through science, spirituality, and storytelling. The seeds of Avicennia marina, the gray mangrove, drifted to Qatar at some point in history and took root, like so many other people here. The mangrove survives in a harsh saline environment through a unique salt excretion process. As a Qatar-born expat, I relate to this struggle to survive and nativize in a land that is both my own and foreign to me, in a cyclical conversation. I explore this nativization process through a ritual of salt extraction, creating botanical compositions, and returning the salt to its source, symbolizing how nativization is a reciprocal process where land and life are intertwined