Ameneh Solati is a research-based artist and architect. Her practice explores notions of power and resistance within overlooked and marginalized spaces, practices, and environments. She employs architectural tools and methods in combination with other media in challenging dominant historical narratives that shape collective subjectivity. Ameneh was born in 1988 in Iran to Iraqi-Iranian parents, raised in Sharjah, and currently resides in Rotterdam.
The Great Reanimation
The Natural History Museum is perhaps the most direct successor to the Cabinet of Curiosities, both of which shared the declared intent to increase and share knowledge. With their project “The Great Reanimation”, Ameneh Solati and Bassem Saad propose that this seemingly innocent motive led to acts of collection that were anything but, instead forming part of deeply violent colonial projects of extraction and exploitation. This is particularly well illustrated in the example of “chimeras,” fantas