ABOUT

Displaced Kashmiri, born 1999

 

An immigrant born in Bokaro Steel City, an industrial capital, with roots from Kashmir, a warzone I have never been able to visit, and now a citizen of a country that I feel does not want me. I do not belong where I am now, stuck in a liminal space. My art documents my explorations through this in-betweenness, of expeditions through my personal identity and out into my interactions with the physical world. My work considers the intersectionality of my identity, and is formulated by the interdisciplinary aspects of my studies. Any foray into land art or the use of natural materials is aligned and immersed with issues of conservation, climate change, and environmental racism. Any crusade into my personal identity considers ideas of marginalization, assimilation, and cultural repression. 

 

My work integrates ancestral memories, experiences, and objects with my current reality. Their preservation is an essential bond to unreachable land and fading familial connection. Through my art, I craft a narrative for myself that accepts the transitional state, and still questions the way it functions. My research in Molecular Biology enables me to connect microscopic details to a larger social scale, outlining my responsibility as an artist and scientist to communicate them. Our connection to land has been commodified and violated, and confronting these realities shape my current work.

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