As an Indian artist of Persian heritage, my practice naturally draws from places of memory, identity and a plethora of tastes and flavours. I use these languages of my identity to season my dialectics, poetry and art, carving out a new space for ideas of plurality. The de's i.e., decolonisation, deconstruction, and often de-contextualization and in its process tracing the past and the present, my work hopes to raise further questions to evaluate and ask how we can - rewrite, re-trace and reconstruct. In my creative experiments, the dichotomies of presence and absence - learning and unlearning, are important and crucial to activate the space in which these visuals and their forms come alive. And my dream is to have an arts practice dynamic in its being, ephemeral and lasting, public and personal - I want to share stories and give room for other voices to add to my own, to raise our bodies buoyant and anchored toward collective, queer, green languages of being.
M(Othering), 2022, video installation with sound, Duration- 5:40 mins.
M(othering) is an attempt to understand belonging, in Stuart Hall's words, as a 'transnational and transformative space of change and renewal'. Belonging in the shifting, othered bodies that carry their buoyant cultures with/in them - with their relationships and connections with each other, with other othered bodies. Vulnerable and stranded beyond the violent geographical boundaries of a home that these bodies cannot hold onto. In this attempt to belong - the maternal figure is an integral part of the fabric of being.
Mother cannot be written without other and to be othered is a process never our own. Traversing these tensions of sacrifice, survival, abandonment and care- the story of the Asian Koyal bird and its reality with that of the Crow, draws on these parallels steeped within our human bodies as well.
To bring this journey to life - the artist/ dancer Angelica Joy embodies the persona of the mother Crow, facing the reality of betrayal and loss and embodying one part of this narrative. The personal care and conversations woven within the identities and relations of the performers expand the work beyond what it might finally nest as, beyond it being an artwork. It is an attempt to bring to life a world, a culture - personal yet shared.
In seeking to map out some of the othered stories of motherhood, of what it means in action, in thought, in feeling to be this identity shaped by external roles and norms, shaped by choices we are not given power in and often, forced to navigate the roles we were never given directions for.
M(othering) is an attempt to understand belonging, in Stuart Hall's words, as a 'transnational and transformative space of change and renewal'. Belonging in the shifting, othered bodies that carry their buoyant cultures with/in them - with their relationships and connections with each other, with other othered bodies. Vulnerable and stranded beyond the violent geographical boundaries of a home that these bodies cannot hold onto. In this attempt to belong - the maternal figure is an integral part of the fabric of being.
Mother cannot be written without other and to be othered is a process never our own. Traversing these tensions of sacrifice, survival, abandonment and care- the story of the Asian Koyal bird and its reality with that of the Crow, draws on these parallels steeped within our human bodies as well.
To bring this journey to life - the artist/ dancer Angelica Joy embodies the persona of the mother Crow, facing the reality of betrayal and loss and embodying one part of this narrative. The personal care and conversations woven within the identities and relations of the performers expand the work beyond what it might finally nest as, beyond it being an artwork. It is an attempt to bring to life a world, a culture - personal yet shared.
In seeking to map out some of the othered stories of motherhood, of what it means in action, in thought, in feeling to be this identity shaped by external roles and norms, shaped by choices we are not given power in and often, forced to navigate the roles we were never given directions for.
