project (sort of)

Project Description

“In the act of overlaying and combining, borders and meeting points are formed, so that the images used by these artists are, by their very essence, viewed with reference to other, different images and combined as such. Crucially, however, these borderlines act as a blending that represents the point at which things become combined: a point of disappearance signifying a relationship between things, and not their distinct separation. There are borders to be crossed: points of transferral at which at which clear division disappears.”

-Collage, Assembling Contemporary Art, 153

“Collage, I think, is indeed a yearning for a lost world and reflects a universal sense of loss.”

-John Stezaker in Collage, Assembling Contemporary Art, 27

This project is an attempt to reconcile the different aspects of my identity in relation to culture and geography. By collaging together different elements, I create a narrative that takes the shape of a fragmented self-portrait. I appropriate traditional imagery from Pakistani culture, deriving influences from truck art to mughal miniature painting, while retaining a sense of newness with the use of technology. The motifs and patterns become symbols which contradict and contrast imagery from the western world, family photographs, and torn up images.