Dawit L. Petros

As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks is a hypothetical re-reading of a historical military expedition of the Nile River in Egypt from 1884-1885. This British-led expedition included 379 ‘Voyageurs’ from across Canada and Québec, including French Canadian, Western Canadian, and First Nation people who were transported on a fleet of converted whaleboats. Their objective was to reach Khartoum – the capital of Sudan, which was at the time an Egyptian province – to save its British Governor General. Major-General Charles Gordon had been attacked by forces inspired by the call to liberate Sudan from foreign control.

The research begins with four primary accounts written by expedition participants and expands into maps, illustrations, photographs, musical transcriptions, and travelogues produced in Canada, Britain, Egypt, and Sudan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am particularly interested in how African and North American indigeneities were shaped through contact and exchange under the pressures of imperial conquest.

I focus my investigations on imperial libraries, whose holdings reflect the epistemologies of colonial powers contending for power in this historical era. This project took shape first during my time as an artist-in-residence at the Special Collections of the University of Saskatchewan, and then as a research-in-progress presentation at Québec City’s Morrin Cultural Centre for the Québec Biennial 2024. It developed further through a residency with Liverpool John Moores University and exploration of Liverpool’s archives and collections of shipping and empire. It is presented as a work-in-progress at the Liverpool Biennial in 2025.

The project unfolds through performance, music, film, artist books, photography, and sculpture—some historical, some newly created in response to imperial archives. In each biennial, As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks establishes a “library within the library,” inviting visitors to conduct their own research using selected archival materials. Takeaway images linked to QR codes allow audiences to continue their investigations beyond the exhibition walls.

By inviting audiences to “textually travel” through the records of empire and works created in response to these, the project enables a reconsideration of elements of the past which are simultaneously hidden and present in both material practices and the psyche, and in visible and invisible places. As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks reflects on themes of control, power, movement, and travel, making connections between events, diverse communities, languages, and places frequently thought of as remote from each other.