Portraits of the Unseen

Paiwand 2, An-nisa 2

This work is going to be as much about absence as it is about presence.. particularly in relation to Paiwand. I see new policy on Afghan minors affecting this group already. On Friday we expected up to 12 people for the NPG session. Eventually the key workers turned up with only one member of the group. The reason was that two of them had received ‘bad news’ about their status and could not face going out. They assured us that they had loved the session last week, and that they had tried very hard to persuade them to come, but it had just not been possible. We were of course sympathetic, the gravity of their circumstances really is becoming clear and what might face them, in a country that is supposedly ‘safe’ (?!) to return to, blows a visit to a gallery out of the water. Louise sent me a copy of a UNHCR report on Afghan minors seeking to come to the UK, called ‘Trees only move in the wind ‘. It makes for sobering and compulsive reading, download it here

The session at the NPG, which we reduced to a gallery session led by Peta, was still very much worth the time . …a real treat having a detailed and animated introduction to some of the portraits and the fielding some animated responses , especially to Quinn’s ‘Self’ , Pandit Gopal, Maggie Hambling and the turkish rugs and mystery objects of the Tudors, including the polarised moral codes, both Henry VIII and Elizabeth 1…

On the Saturday, I took a copy of the publication which I got from an unforgettable show at the British Museum a few years ago called Word into Art. I was interested to show the girls not only some of the incredible and thought provoking work but to raise some ideas that we might work with from them. We played around with drawing our names (which is how it feels if Arabic is not your first language) in the Arabic script, to create what I call ‘name scripts’ both horizontally and then vertically by linking the names together, then using mirroring (see image). We were playing within the tradition of ‘Hurufiyya’, art which ‘deals with the Arabic language, letter or text , as a visual element of composing’.

I came apon a lot of works using the idea of the magical tradition, which centres apon numerical values attached to letters, the use of repetition as a form of visual incantation.

Humera, who runs An-nisa, talked about how when printing came into use, there was a big controversy around it in Islam, as it was felt that the sacred nature of writing the word of god, the Koran, had been disrupted. So, writing was/ can be a devotional act. Coupled with the idea that in Islam , one must have the right name , which accords with one’s true being, then writing one’s name within a certain context can become an intentional act of devotion, of presencing oneself in a primal way. In Word into Art, in reference to the artist Shakir Hassan Al Said, it is written that he was ‘influenced by Sufi Husayn ibn Mansur el Hallaaj’ who believed that the ‘arabic script , in it’s different forms and schools, reflects and is a reflection of the history of the Arab individual and social reality, which remained stored in the intellectual consciousness of culture and society’ and….(contains) of mythological consciousness and Mesopotamian societies and all others that followed. Thus, language and its written form are the means of revealing the hidden’ (Shabout 1999:244, Porter: Word into Art)

There’s something potentially powerful about the traces of ourselves we leave behind when we write our names in such an intentional way, together. I liked the bold way the girls experimented with their names (Arabic is not their first written language but they learn it an Sunday school for Koranic purposes) . Also, it felt very natural when we linked them together and they were confident in doing this. I want to explore this more. I am going to try this with Paiwand tomorrow and see where it leads.

Paiwand Session 1 (Harrow)

On Friday we worked with the second of the three groups mainly Afghan young men, who are a lot more recent to this country and in a very different situation. We went to their special accommodation in Harrow, where six of them live together and are supported by key workers from Paiwand. They have been here for between three and eighteen months and most are waiting on a decision from above as to whether they can stay. It has taken some of them three months at least to travel from Afghanistan, from very traumatic situations, to reach the UK and within a short time period they could be sent back.

Having heard on the news that there is a policy to try to repatriate young men like them back to their home, to a country which we are helping to pull apart, I felt the edginess of their situation without being able to totally relate to it, but i tried to find a reference point. I remembered relatives who have been sent back to Iran and teenage cousins who came to live with us during the post-revolutionary days of terror (that still persist) , three of whom we adopted, and I realise now they were coming into a situation of privileges, of having an existing connection elsewhere – my mother – who cared enough to help them make the transition here. Now these cousins/siblings have families here and are ‘integrated’ into British life, like the An-nisa group are, but the Paiwand group are at the beginning of a process . As far as I know none of these young men has relatives here, but I was at least heartened to see how being together within the house, with the background of a very socially networked culture, and the support of Paiwand, that a community is created.

At the start of the session we were myself, Louise, and Peta (who is the supporting artist and an educator working for the NPG) and just three young men (I can’t seem to say boys because they are much closer to manhood than I had expected ). I speak some farsi, so felt could understand and speak a little, but was very grateful for translation!

I showed them my work, including ‘Mother Tongue’, – to make the cultural connection with rice cookers, which they would know, and relationship to heritage and ancestors through food- and introduced the idea of installation art which is always an eye opener, raises eyebrows and questions and I am curious to see what they make of ‘Dream On’ at the South bank tomorow, which we will visit in the afternoon, as well as Yinko Shonibare’s ship in a bottle on the Fourth plinth, over lunch..

After Fridays prayers the numbers increased and by the time we started weaving there were six, together with Maria, Maryam and Sami, their key workers. I asked them to choose one colour for the past , one for the present and one for the future which sums up the spirit of it, to acknowledge past experience , to be aware of the current situation and to create and look forward to a next step ahead. (I realise that in some cases this step may be back home, unwillingly…).Javad, it turns out , was weaving carpets from age 8, and , wove a perfectly formed St Georges flag on his book..There is a real curiosity about British culture and as 3pm approached (time for a world cup match) some of them were rather on edge and keen to finish…but there was enough engagement for us to feel a connection and healthy curiosity had been created and all of them seemed keen to come to the NPG tomorrow At the end of the sessions a few of them made their weaves into wristbands, this made me smile…