Hold Water I

Since the 1980s, however, the site has risked ecological disaster as the Azraq water basin has been pumped to supply Amman’s booming urban population. Some estimates state that the pools have shrunk to 0.4% of their original area, leading to the drastic decline in the number of migratory birds for which Azraq was once celebrated.¹ According to the RSCN, by 1993 the extraction of water was so great that no surface water remained and the oasis’s ecological value was virtually destroyed.²

The design is based on photography taken during van Helten’s site visit and workshop with the Makani Jordan school for Syrian and Jordanian children in North Azraq. The workshop was designed to invoke the community’s collective memory of the oasis habitat using colour photographs from the 1960s as a prompt. The handling of these images is intended to symbolically convey the preciousness and scarcity of water at a time when overuse and drought has brought instability to Azraq and the broader Middle Eastern region. The colour blue is an important element, referencing the meaning of ‘Azraq,’ the community’s collective memory of the once lush desert oasis, and the promise of restoring the waterways to their former brilliance.

Curated by aptART for USAID and Mercy Corps, the project aimed to raise awareness for these issues as well as the positive water conversation practices and aid programs facilitated by the commissioning organisations and the Jordan government.

Such programs – as well as conservation, eco-tourism, and other tactics to rehabilitate the oasis – have now begun to restore significant portions of the Azraq wetland and lure back some of the migratory birds.⁴