Apnay Mahal Ma, 2020

Three-channel sound installation

For the month–long residency at VM Art Gallery, I used the sense of sound to interrogate notions of longing in relation to migration.

Amidst the many physical consequences of the global pandemic that began in early 2020, I reflect on the expansive migration to virtual territories. From within these technologies and digital realms of global activity, I examine what our sensory bodies can and cannot access.

When the partition of 1947 occurred, the songs of my ancestors travelled with Ammi, my maternal grandmother. She comforted herself through the words and melodies that escaped with her when she moved across the border of India and Pakistan. Invisible, weightless, easy to carry and conceal, songs of her home, and her own, were passed down to Amma, my mother, and then her offspring, as a way of connecting us to our origins.

As a recent migrant to the U.S I think about what I brought with me and what I now take into uncharted places online. Working in the VM gallery from afar, I suspend as an audio-visual projection in an amorphous space, performing a folk song that transcends borders, connects me to my ancestors, and composes the place where we still live. Recalling my grandmother’s beloved song “Suno Sakhi”, I reconnect to a distant past through the ritual of singing and through the poignant lyrical expressions of devotion and longing for what now seems unattainable.

The distance, delay and decay of digital communication highlights the current fragility of our increasingly virtual lives, where sonic memories and oral histories attempt to reconstitute our living quarters, our Mahal.

Exhibited and made with the support of IRL: In Real Life & VM Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan.

Curated by Mallika Rangoonwala

Video by PakaStudios

Images by Humayun M

Special thanks to Omeed Veiseh, Danish Faruqi, Danish Khawaja, Abi Tariq and Joseph Randolph.

ALOUD-II, 2020

Video installation

The voice of the head, nose, throat, chest and base connect to allign with the c(h)ord.

Exhibited at the collateral exhibition of the Lahore Biennale 2020 in collaboration with the Art Plaza Lahore, Pakistan.

Curated by Foundation Art Divvy, Zahra Khan.

ALOUD-I, 2019

5 channel sound installation in 12 x 20ft steel container.

(Documentation available upon request)

Channeling notes from the base, chest, throat, nose and head, I draw out my selves.

Exhibited at the Quantum City: Territory | Space | Place, International Public Art Festival, KPT, Karachi, Pakistan

Curated by Amin Gulgee, Sara Pagganwala and Zarmeene Shah.

Memories of Skin, 2018

Sound Performance and mixed-media installation

For this installation I arranged sound, sculptures and a projected video to further sound the feeling of skin.

A cacophonous sound piece of clashing steel sculptures reverberates in the gallery space. These loud sounds were made from the sculptures that once held my voice. They now hang empty and disassembled. As a cleansing of their memory, an ablution is performed: showering onto the objects is a video projection of the flowing and rearranging blood vessels that lay under the skin. Skin, like memory, moves. The smooth and shiny surfaces of the sculptures now reflect waves of red streams that create a new landscape. On closer contact with headphones, you hear voices that recall closeness. Vocal calls responding to textures of skin are triggered live and layered on top of another to create a unique shared remembrance.