Wet Archives

What is seen as a source of information, and what is not? Why are documents written by outside scholars studying minorities defined as belonging to archives, but not the lands, waters and garments that have absorbed knowledge over the centuries? The exhibition delves into the archives in an attempt to strive out of the Western definition of archiving, which carries with it the ghosts of the oppressor’s gaze, research, exoticism and violence.

In what other ways could we define the concepts of archives and history? History lives everywhere, and archives spread in everything we leave our mark in. The title of the exhibition emphasises the embodied nature of archives, referring to wetness, which can mean the secretions of the human body, documents soaked beyond legibility, or bodies of water that preserve knowledge.

The exhibition is part of the gallery’s 2025-26 program called Textures of Security, which has been curated through an open call by the museum’s curatorial team and invited curator Farbod Fakharzadeh.