Exhibitions
Works in Transit
📍310 New Cross Road, London
Heartbreak is a universal feeling that we experience at least once in our lifetime. Throughout my journey, I have found that heartbreak has been a major theme in my life, my friends’ lives and my online communities’ at Randistic. It is also a topic that many people are afraid to approach and discuss due to the vulnerability and shame that is associated with it which makes it hard for us to deal with and move on. Heartbreak is one of the many experiences that leave us feeling empty, isolated, unlovable and completely alone. Ironically enough, it is also a universal human experience. However, we often reserve our heartbreak stories for our closest friends, never sharing them with the world. But what if we can ease the pain of each other by sharing a single part of it? What if we are to share our letter of forgiveness to the one who broke our heart? It is so valuable to know that we are not alone.
Consequently, this is where my project stands. It’s called “for•give, letters by the broken hearted” and it’s about heartbreak and forgiveness. The project has two faces:
Online, where you can write and read anonymous forgiveness letters.
In a physical form in a pocket sized booklet.
It’s called for•give for two reasons:
Forgive: the intentional act of forgiveness.
For(give): Some of the letters have been turned into a pocket sized booklet. I asked people to (give) away the booklet once they were done to someone else who they think needs to read it.
Works in Transit
Site-specific sound experience together with Agathe Barre, Kellyrose Marry, Shereen Perera, Emily Richardson, Amaal Said.
📍St James Hatcham Church of England, London
Take Refuge started as an exploration into the politics of silence and the myriad roles silence plays in our day to day lives. As these conversations developed we became fascinated by trends such as ASMR (Auto Sensory Meridian Response), apps such as Headspace and an ever increasing tendency to use sound, silence and meditative noise as a means of self care. Take Refuge presents itself as a self care campaign where listeners are encouraged to engage in an act of ‘mindfulness’ by listening to recordings of meditative style sounds. However, these recordings have been captured in deeply political spaces associated with the refugee and asylum seeker journey to the UK. Listeners are only made aware of what they have listened to at the end of each track when they are informed by an ASMR style presenter. The aim of Take Refuge is to call attention to our privilege and 21st century obsession with self care and how we are constantly told to “switch off” and unwind but how desperately we need to “switch on” when it comes to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers.
Ridiculous
Performance and Photo Piece
📍Elephant West Art Space, London
The performance titled Compartmentalize explored what can be defined as ‘putting your feelings in a box in the back of your mind to be forgotten’ and ‘a subconscious psychological defence mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance’. It sought to generate both observation and an act of internal performance by the audience – so they unconsciously compartmentalised their thoughts about what they saw happen. I pulled the fabric of thoughts from my head and put them in a black box. Ludicrously enough, my lips appeared to have migrated to my forehead, emphasising the internality of the thoughts and emotions I was performing. The point was to reflect on the problems which compartmentalisation can cause to our mental health: the danger that we become so skilled at the process, we alienate ourselves from the basic elements of what it means to be a human being. How ridiculous would that be?
#Artivism for Gender Equality
Photo Piece
📍Geneva, Switzerland
This piece talks about the issue of sexism. The exhibition highlighted the struggles for gender equality and women’s rights in Europe, the United States of America, Canada, the Caucasus and Central Asia countries. The exhibition celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the agenda for women’s rights and empowerment everywhere.
This exhibition was conceptualized by Women’s Major Group and UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia.