With her art project Sweet Civilisations, Astera Mortezai questions the disappearance of the identity, roots, and historical narratives of the society in which she grew up: Kurdistan. Mortezai uses sugar as a means to ironically denounce this disappearance. For when the sugar in a candy melts, the shape of the candy changes. In the same way, the understanding of the past is distorted by time and constructed narratives. Mortezai created an installation consisting of candy molds made of sugar, based on a part of an ancient Mesopotamian chest found in Ziwiyeh, Eastern Kurdistan. The work was on display during the exhibition Chewed on / Chewed up at Het Archief in Rotterdam in January 2026.