Like the Smell of Your Exile in My Body
Dcoumentaiton of performance/performance for camera
Duration 3': 37"
Performance aprox. 30'
Like the Smell of your exile in my body (2017) is a performance for camera that was produced during Omega Fragmented (The Soil Returns to Us) no.6 (2017).
Omega Fragmented (The Soil Returns to Us) no.6 is a collaboration between me and Jamal Sterret. This live action took place on the ground floor of a large under-construction warehouse on 7 May 2017 at Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale in Tirana, Albania. In this performance, Jamal and I split the site of the performance into public and private territories by using a veil as a physical barrier between the two. The main narrative of the live action consists of establishing temporary habitat under the veil (i.e. private domain) where we strap our limbs together with strings. We then engage in an intimate dance-like-wrestling accompanied by my singing, as I take off my inside-out shirt and put it on Jamal.
Perhaps Under The Surface Is Between the Skin
Dcoumentaiton of performance/performance for camera
Duration 4':36"
Performance approx. 6 hrs
Perhaps Under the Surface Is Between the Skin (2017) is an assmbelge of stills captured from the cameras attached to my wrists. The narrative of the moving image displays the process of constructing the peom The Journey By Night (2017). This poem is a cut up made from the 17th chapter of the Quran with the same name.
Feathers and Shrapnel
Dcoumentaiton of performance/performance for camera
Duration 9':03"
Performance approx. 2 hrs
Feathers and Shrapnel (2017) took place on 7 May 2017. In this performance I walk with my iPhone and a mirror taken from my hotel room and explore the interiors of a decommissioned bomb shelter designed for Enver Hoxha and his elite personnel in Tirana, Albania. During my walk I discuss the significance of exploring various types of power-relations in my artistic research.
On 6 November 2017 and as part of my research to examine how documentation can be presented as a site-specific artwork, I publicly displayed this piece and performed a live-singing during its presentation at Kingston School of Art.
Kamasutra for Martyrdom
I was selected by Jamie Green to do a 10-day funded artist residency at his studio in Glasgow between 15 to 26 November 2017.
My main aim during this residency was to both emphasise and offer my work as a form of resistance to the multitude of ways that I was being stereotypically categorised and perceived as a male Muslim artist and an immigrant with alleged suspicious intensions in various semi-public territories in Glasgow.
The chosen locations for my performative investigations during this residency were City Chambers, Trader’s Hall, Kelvinside Parish Church, St Andrew’s Cathedral and Minhaj Al-Quran Mosque.
In these locations, I created a series of daily situations in front of several cameras, where the presence of my high heel shoes in conjunction with my Quranic poems and my own body operated as a signifier for examining my own ambiguous socio-political status.
My visual investigations included series of performances for the camera; extensive walking in my high heel shoes, sewing Quranic cut-ups to my shoes, singing daily constructed songs and producing of prints.
City Chambers
Trader's Hall
Kelvinside Parish Church
St Andrew's Cathedral
Minhaj Al-Quran Mosque