Title: Mute Tongue I: Medium: Glazed porcelain, Size: Variable, Edition: 3 + 1 AP, Year: 2019
Title: Mute Tongue II: Medium: Glazed porcelain, Projector, Transparent film. Size: Variable, Edition: 3 + 1 AP, Year: 2021
The vocalization of the silence that characterizes biographical narratives is a crucial component of alternative, emancipatory knowledge production. The danger of being from the margin and speaking at the centre has always been a struggle for the people seen as ‘Others’ in Eurocentric societies. The margin is both a site of repression and a site of resistance (hooks 1990). Within the unfortunate dynamics of power, it’s always been a question- Who can Speak? Whose voices are heard? The exercise of power in different contexts has been instrumental in perpetuating everyday, structural, and institutional racism, which has resulted in a pervading sense of speechlessness and fear among the oppressed. The mouth, being a significant organ, is symbolic of speech and enunciation. Consequently, in most regimes characterized by oppression, the freedom of speech is often suppressed.
Storytelling has been an essential method in this work, a live archive of voices and micro-histories, often not mentioned in conventional history. The work is divided into two parts. The first part, Mute Tongue I, is a transcribed audiograph/soundscape map in glazed porcelain. I met Murad and Anthony in Autonome Schule, a migrant language school in the city of Zurich, where I went to learn German with others. I have been intrigued by the stories of their forced migration and exile. Murad, a Somalian man, and Anthony, a Sri Lankan national, were forced to flee their homeland during the Civil War. Their stories have been adapted into the poem I have written; after the listening sessions, I read it aloud, recorded and translated the voice into the audiograph, and finally cast them in porcelain. The voice graph is precisely made by hand in porcelain to ensure that the narratives are constantly in motion, permanently spoken, and never silenced.
The title of Mute Tongue II (Who am I, Without Exile?) has been taken from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s poem which is translated by Fady Joudah. It consists of porcelain soundwaves and a projection of an itinerary of Farid floating on the water. It’s a visual representation of the spoken language of Farid’s voice, telling his own story in his own voice. Farid was born in Balochistan to Afghani immigrant parents, while his parents had to take refuge in Pakistan from Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 70s. Later, Farid had to seek asylum in Switzerland at a very young age due to political unrest. This soundwave narrates the itinerary of his migration over two years, his family’s migration, and his crossing of the Mediterranean in a rickety dinghy.
Usually, a voice is heard and not seen, and in this piece, you see the juxtaposition- a sound that has a three-dimensional shape. The absence of the voice manifests the discourses which are marginalized, silenced, colonial-subjugated, war-torn, overlooked, authoring their own manifestos on nationality, citizenship and belonging.
The above image is the first part: Mute Tongue.
Image courtesy: Artist
Detailed view: Mute Tongue I, 2020
Image courtesy: Artist
Installation view: Mute Tongue II (Who Am I, Without Exile?) at We ARE AIA, Löwenbräu Zürich, 2022.
Image courtesy: Artist
Detailed projection view: Mute Tongue II (Who Am I, Without Exile?) at We ARE AIA, Löwenbräu Zürich, 2022.
Image courtesy: Artist
Installation view: Mute Tongue II (Who Am I, Without Exile?) at We ARE AIA, Löwenbräu Zürich, 2022.
Image courtesy: Artist
Detailed view: Mute Tongue, 2020
Image courtesy: Artist
Detailed view Mute Tongue from making. Image courtesy: Artist