Kula: Common Fuel

ln this monumental work, Kaabi-Linke links the historical use of coal with its modern overexploitation.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke's work asks questions about geopolitics in the light of contemporary, economic, social and urban contexts. This work is part of the Kula series, whose title is borrowed from the Proto-Germanic expression for coal. Used since prehistoric times in cave paintings and excavated for the past 2000 years, this non-renewable raw material has come, over the last 200 years, to symbolise the age of industrial pollution. Made from the sedimentation of lignite grains on silk paper, the work evokes divination practices, such as reading tea leaves or coffee grounds.