‘Folded Letters from Failaka’ is a speculative, research-based art project centered on Failaka Island, a site suspended between histories of fertility and abandonment, mythologies and the realities of modern life.

Failaka, or Filka, exists under many names and forms. It is neither a utopia nor a dystopia, but rather a reflective mirror of shifting climates, civilizations, relics, and deities. The island resists classification—it exists within its own temporality, revealing archaeological and cultural truths embedded in its soil, its ruins, and its rituals. We are compelled by the imagined scenarios in which Failaka gave, received, and participated—acting not merely as a location but as an agent in the history of the region. It hosts gods and goddesses, animal messengers, rituals, and the patterns of daily life.

Failaka occupies a fragmented place in Kuwait’s national psyche, nestled within the Persian Gulf, distant yet enduring. Our project approaches this landmass through a series of folded letters( Tangible archive )—fictional and documentary fragments that narrate the island’s temporal and material mutations. These letters—composed through photography, collage, poetry, and architectural observation—become vessels for memory, holding this moment in time while echoing a far longer existence, one that surpasses our perceived knowledge. They form a poetic and speculative archive, a contemporary time capsule that deliberately blurs the boundaries between memory and fiction.

Each letter will imagine a different voice: an ancient animal, a migrant worker, a forgotten god, a salt-covered stone—each speculating on how materials and bodies remember. These are not linear narratives but rather dramaturgies of fragmentation, mapping disjointed yet intimate understandings of place. In this sense, the island becomes a stage where the metaphysical and the physical, the mythological and the geopolitical, actively interact. It is an attempt to listen to what remains, and to imagine what could return.