I have spent all my time lost in the effort of translation, here lay the dialects of my heart for your consumption.
“Pencilled in and Eager, with my head in the sand” is a ritual, in the form of painting (2022-2024) with acrylic, watercolour, ink, charcoal, colour pencil, chalk, oil pastel, graphite, rain and dirt all layered as gesture drawings on pieces of un-stretched canvas. This work contemplates migrant relations with unsurrendered Indigenous land through the perspective of an ever-changing politicised body that is immobilised by the colonial structure of borders.
Trying to find catharsis from the pervasive, repetitive, and brutal nature of racial trauma- I made these pieces of canvas my companions and started to document my walks in so called Vancouver, Canada and Delhi, India through sensory maps and gesture drawings. With this; memory, spirit, and chronic pain became part of the material.
What are the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual conditions of being visibly brown and, queer across these locations? This work is an unraveling of the physical form, as I try to find ways to remember and recognise the world around myself. To contend with my process is to consider that migration is almost entirely the result of political and economic processes bound with imperial conquest and capitalist globalisation.
If hope is a responsibility of the oppressed, then my work considers itself to be hopeful, imaginative, and never alone.
By creating a dialogue between painting and writing, my work acknowledges the gravity of storytelling. As a descendent of survivors of the India Pakistan partition in 1947, my work reflects the untold histories of my lineage, by ritualising the practice of remembering, yearning, forgetting. As of now, during India’s fall into far-right hindutva fascism, I am re-thinking the meaning of freedom at the expense of ethnic and religious minorities. How can I honour the resilience of my ancestors with responsibility, as a scheduled caste migrant in the imperial core of the world?
Citations:
– Annihilation of Caste, B.R. Ambedkar
– This Bridge Called My Back (anthology), Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
– Border and Rule, Harsha Walia
– Didactics to Postpone the End of the World, Sarah Shamash
– Azadi, Arundhati Roy
– And I Still Rise, Audre Lorde
– The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
– Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
– Light in Gaza (anthology), Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, Michael Merryman Lotze
– The Gender of Caste, Charu Gupta
– Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
– A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
– Harrowings, Cecily Nicholson
– This Will Be an Uncomfortable but Necessary Read (open letter)
– a city is a gut fantasy, Malivia Khondaker
– Rungh, Volume 3, Number 3, How do you say Queer in South Asian?
– how i stay alive, a guide for you, and for me, Arkah
– Rehearsals for Living, Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
– Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi
Playlist:
No Other Life Without You, Greenflow
Orin Aro, The Lijadu Sisters
Winter is Much Too Long, Cloe Martin
Thank you, Monik
I am Song – Sing Me, Asha Puthli
I’ll Go Anywhere, Mustafa
Flower Juice, Soapkills
Everyday People, Sly & The Family Stone
Aaj Jane Ki Zid Na Karo, Farida Khanum
On the Low, Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions
Time’s a Wastin, Erykah Badu
Know Who You Are at Every Age, Cocteau Twins
Some Things Never Seem To Fucking Work, Solange
I Wear My Roots Like a Medal, Dhee
La Vita, Beverly Glenn-Copeland
Rainforest, Noname
Just Like Water, Ms. Lauryn Hill
Tere Bin, Rabbi Shergill
I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm, Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
Not For Sale, Sudan Archives
Mad, Solange, Lil Wayne
Fight Back, Lillian Allen
Coloured People’s Time Machine, Gabriel Teodros
अर्ख 