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…
