Bol (Urdu: Speak)
2013 -2021
Digital photo prints, 38 x 43 in.
Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Oklahoma City, OK
Aicon Gallery Viewing Room (digital format)
New York, NY
Tennesse Arts Commission
Nashville, TN
Eisenman Arts Center
Dallas, TX
Los Angeles Center for Digital Art
Los Angeles, CA
Digital photo prints, 38 x 43 inches each
Bol (translation in Urdu: Speak. The title is taken from Faiz Ahmad Faiz's poem: Speak for your lips are free.)
To be one with the trees is to know Life within your own spirit - Chief Sequoia
Created at a transitional time in my life in the woods that became my refuge and place of healing, Bol references a woman’s multiple, veiled, paradoxical identities, and gaining self-knowledge or a voice. The woman is confined in layers of the chadors that bind her, hiding her true identity, yet they a refuge protecting her from the outside world, clinging to her, defining her form. She enclosed by the fabric covering her like a web while also adorned by it. She seems content and accepting of her reality in some images, having surrendered. In others she struggling to break free. The web she is trapped in is beautiful, colorful, and protective. It has sheltered her through many storms evident by the fallen, ruptured trees around her. It clings to her like a lovely garment, a protective covering that refuses to shed. Veiled in the chadors that symbolize her cultural identity, but isolated from that culture, what is her core identity that has been concealed? Whether struggling to break out of the fabric trapping or surrendered to it, she is one with the lone trees hidden in the woods, trees that have fallen and ruptured from life’s many storms.
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