Portraits of the Unseen

I see my son Moses, 3 in October, grasping for complete sentences now to communicate, reaching for the fullness of a new language that we share, and I realise, here in my studio as I do experiments with the ideas and material I have so far, that I am doing a similar thing. I am expanding my visual language slowly and sometimes I feel very young in the process. I have been trying out using the name scripts from the groups so far to sketch out a potential large scale horizontal wall work for the first gallery space.

I used the name scripts from the last sessions to do a 1:2 scale sketch on my studio wall, and am now seeing how I can integrate ‘micro-script’ into the lines of the names. I’m trying it with bias binding and writing on this, then pinning it to the wall. It’s very DIY but it gives me a sense of where it might or might not go. Nothing’s fixed. I guess I knew I would want to take the idea of the poem bound around ‘Mother Tongue’ further, and a 2 dimensional version is something I want to explore. I’m clear that the first Gallery needs to be 2D, and that multi-lingual writing and mirroring will be the main channel of ideas. Until I have finished the cycle of engagement, in early august – it’s impossible to define what the content of these walls will be, but some elements are becoming clear already. On Monday I have a meeting with the Heads of Design , Participation and Art Handling and Louise so I’m working on more detailed drawings, as I have already submitted aerial plans which have raised a lot of questions and I’m taking it as far as I can until I have all material after the sessions are done. Time is tight so this focuses the mind but I am aware too that I have to follow the content to create the final form, or it won’t work.

Last Friday’s session with Paiwand at their home was challenging. The only way to get the six boys in the house into the living room in the first place was to use old school tactics and offer to draw their portraits, which I managed to do with three of them. The others were nowhere to be seen. I have to say I really enjoyed the experience of drawing them, (and they seemed to too). It’s been a while since I drew anyone apart from my children…Two of them, Zenullah and Ramatullah, then stayed to work on name scripts and we tried to talk about meanings of names but there was no translation present in the morning and this was tricky — I was frustrated at my poor Farsi and these kind of situations increase my desire to start learning properly again, which I guess is a good thing.

With Paiwand, I have been limited to these two names only for the name script, since, after the morning session, all the boys went off unaccompanied to the Mosque and never returned, leaving us with one of their college friends, Milan, and Sami the key worker. He later commented that he should have gone with them to ensure they returned but didn’t want to leave us on our own. We were a bit gutted that they didn’t bother to return and got distracted with having lunch with Mosque buddies. But then they are teenagers and a hard to reach audience so it goes with the territory – an attitude of extreme flexibility was required. It raises lots of questions for me as it felt like in the first session they were really engaged and the feedback wa very positive. We learnt quite a bit about Gujarat from Milan and about Sami’s background and aspirations. He has been here in London for 15 years (he came with his entire family) so he is a good reference point for the boys.

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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.

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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…

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An-nisa, Session 1, Mapping + Weaving the Self

I’m going to be impressionistic in my account of these sessions, that feels like the most useful way of working towards the final piece which is going to be using language quite heavily in the installation.

An-nisa:

Names – Humera, Ilyeh, Safa, Fauzia, Hanan, Wafaa (more to come next session)

Countries connected to- Britain, France, Spain, Morocco, India,Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Kenya, Iran.

Languages spoken or part spoken – English, French, Belgian, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Swahili

Colours woven by the group; Crimson red, cerulean blue, saffron yellow, ivy green, white, mustard yellow, lilac blue, bright green, deep red, saffron yellow, black, mid- purple.

There was a lot of conversation, fuelled by the weaving and specific questions I had in mind on the focus of ‘how do the cultures we are connected to influence who we are?’

I don’t want to disclose specific conversations, but their essence and extracts from them will be woven into the final piece. I will reflect on the sessions where appropriate.

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Reading that last entry I wondered if I had strayed from the focus of my project, which is the ‘Unseen self’, a way of navigating identity and consciousness through cloth, language, colour, mirroring within space. But then, posting up my mother’s site I was reminded that without her heritage I would not be doing this project. My cultural sources are a point of identification in working with the three groups that have now been set up to work over the next two months. We now have a timetable and a supporting artist, with the first session starting this weekend. Louise has pulled this together very fast and it’s feeling very real. The three groups; An-Nisa, a young Muslim women’s group, Paiwand, young Afghani’s in special accommodation, and Tallo, a Somali organisation who have organised for a group to work part of their Summer School with us. I have been working on session plans, we only have the equivalent of 4 days of contact time so it’s going to be pretty intense but I know that with some focused planning and facilitating both they and I are going to develop our practice and perspective in unexpected and fruitful ways. The basis of the sessions are :

1. Mapping and Weaving the Self

2. An NPG visit focusing on the idea of the Unseen, and the mediums of the project (objects, colour, textile, text)

3. Speaking/Writing the Self / Considering objects as Self

4. Wrapping and Writing: Object Rituals

I have also prepared some worksheets with questions around home, heritage, etc that are intended to form the basis of recorded discussions, from which will be extracted texts for use in the space. We will be producing a woven work for them to keep and having them contributed objects from their life that will be wrapped and written on in a similar way to my ‘Mother tongue’ piece. And of course I will be using what I learned from The Gifts project and developing ideas that came from that in terms of more developed ways of combining texts and objects within the installation space.

We have the two Studio galleries to work with, and as I am drawn to developing the idea of mirroring, of inner and outer, absence and presence etc, I will work with the spatial duality that these galleries offer. I want to set up a contrast between the two spaces that is immersive, reflective and offers a whole range of readings of the work produced.

Some of the items on my menu at the moment are:

Colour palette drawn from thread and cloth chosen during workshops, panoramic walls of texts in the nine languages spoken by the groups in one room, and wrapped objects and textile texts as a focus point in the second room. Seating in both, I want people to dwell there…

I’ve been using bibliomancy again to find relevant poems to further ideas – here is one by Attar;

‘Looking for Your Own Face’

Your face is neither infinite or ephemeral

You can never see your own face,

Only a reflection, not the face itself.

So you sigh in front of mirrors

And cloud the surface

It’s better to keep your breath cold

Hold it, like a diver does in the ocean

One slight movement, the mirror image goes

Don’t be dead or asleep or awake

Don’t be anything

What you most want

What you travel around wishing to find

Lose yourself as lovers lose themselves

And you’ll be that

(p57, The Hand of Poetry : Five Mystic Poets of Persia’ (lectures by Inayat Khan, trans Coleman Barks)

Finally, on the subject of bibliomancy, just to mention over the river from the NPG, our book installation is still up – ‘Dream On’ at the QEH, South Bank (see image + info) and am wondering whether to take the groups there when they come to the NPG, to get some random inspiration…

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