Sahar        Tarighi

I have been developing a series of installations that explore the consequences of political borders on the Kurdish body and land, with a focus on the practice of Kolberi—a form of cross-border labor in the mountainous regions of Kurdistan, particularly between Iran and Iraq. Kolberi is a survival strategy shaped by state violence, political oppression, and systemic abandonment. Survival itself becomes a form of resistance—a negotiation with precarity where the Kurdish body is continuously positioned between life and death. Kolberi exists at the intersection of class, ethnicity, and systemic economic neglect, profoundly affecting the lives of Kurdish people. The risks are severe and often fatal—state forces shoot workers, while others face falls from cliffs, landmines, and exposure to extreme cold, including frostbite. These dangers frequently result in life-altering injuries, such as amputations, leaving families economically and emotionally devastated.

 

Informed by necropolitics, my practice engages the Kurdish body as a site where the state’s power to decide who may live and who may die is made brutally visible. The Kurdish Kolber inhabits this precarious threshold, where survival is a daily negotiation against death sanctioned—or at least tolerated—by the state. Much like Giorgio Agamben’s concept of Homo Sacer, the Kolber exists in a zone of exclusion: their life can be taken without consequence, their death rarely grieved, and their labor systematically exploited. They are rendered disposable, yet they are necessary for sustaining the border economy. The Kolber’s body is simultaneously targeted, criminalized, and erased—trapped in a cycle of visibility without protection.

 

For Kurdish women, this condition is further compounded by patriarchal structures and systemic gendered violence. Despite the growing number of women and children participating in Kolberi, their stories remain largely undocumented and unexplored. In the few available photographs and documentaries, their faces are often intentionally veiled, and they sometimes disguise themselves as men to avoid recognition. They are doubly marginalized: within the state’s border economy and within the patriarchal structures. In this erasure, their labor, their stories, and their grief become almost invisible. Female Kolbers often receive lower wages, carry lighter loads, and are expected to continue domestic labor alongside their dangerous crossings. Their bodies, much like their work, remain structurally overlooked.

 

In my research and art-making, I envision the Kolber’s journey from the moment they step into the Zagros Mountains—confronting the landscape with a layered burden: the physical weight of their load, the emotional weight of fear and uncertainty, and the ever-present risk of never making it back home. They carry these risks simply to earn the bare minimum—to secure food and meet their most basic needs. The Kolber’s body and the land become inseparable witnesses to exploitation and survival. In my studio research and practice, I approach the Kolber’s body as a living repository—a vessel carrying the weight of collective trauma, memory, and the ongoing tragedy of systemic neglect. The land itself holds these stories alongside the body. Through walking, climbing, carrying, and enduring, their stories remain inscribed in the landscape.