Audio Portrait: The Girly Stuff

The Girly Stuff

Jackson Heights, Flushing, NY: What I Hear

I smell the old Indian man and his screams.   It smells like samosas and chicken curry.  He’s screaming in Punjabi, telling his employee to get the potatoes out of the truck.  It sounds like home.

Every window brings a stream of pots and pans clashing into each other, almost like glass bangles hanging on my wrist, delicately hitting each other. 

A mother cooking for her husband, her children, herself.  She opens jars of spices.   Metal against glass. 

That’s all I hear of her. 

The keynote sounds are like a Bollywood movie playing in surround sound around me.  Every saree store I pass plays a familiar 90s song that fills my ears.  

Sound signals.   They want me to walk in and buy a bright saree sprinkled with enlarged rhinestones. The call me “older sister.”   Beckoning me to look at all the sarees that would look good on me.  Their voices sound like little three year olds, begging me for something.  I don’t even wear sarees. 

Every other car that passes by is blasting modern Indian music.  Obnoxious, auto tuned, Hindi songs with moments of bad English rapping.  I call it “weshtern” music.  It sounds like embarrassment.  Like when you trip on flat ground. 

On the last corner, by the train station, there’s a little kid that’s sucking on a light green kulfi, frozen sweet cream, pistachio flavored.  He keeps sucking on it, slurping the melting cream.  It’s almost like being in the shower and repeatedly taking off and putting on the suction cup hook on the tile wall.  The loofa falls off, but you keep doing it.          

Define a Space

Gnark: After Hours

Artist's Statement: The Process

I believe in bias and all its relevancy.  Everything I convey will be tainted by my perception.  And what I perceive comes from the melding of generations and generations of perceptions that comes from different countries, different people, different societies, different economies.  Everything is different.  I can't remove that from what I create.  And I will not apologize.  I will not apologize because what you are getting is my reality, the reality that expresses freedom and self understanding.  The best creations are those that contain images of reality, of someone's reality.  My reality is my hyphenated self, the self that I am not ashamed of nor am I confused about, nor am I trying to hide it.  I am a Muslim, I am Pakistani, I am Indian, I am American, and so is my art, everything that I create.  Everything I understand comes from the little hyphen between every different identity.  My identity lies in a hyphen and so does my art.

 

I am currently working on a short film about Jihad.  I am working with Muslim youth in the New York college community.  The essence of the film is understanding what Jihad really is.  Is it a word you heard on the news hidden behind the gaudy veil of terrorism?  Is it what you heard your parents talking about? Is it something you read about?  Whatever the case may be, my film deals with the true understanding of Muslims and Islam and if  its really what the news portrays it as.  This understanding and knowledge is absolutely necessary. And what better witnesses than young, American-Muslims who come from various different backgrounds and mentalities?

 

My work is inspired by the candid and what can emerge from the candid.  There are many things that can resurface from my creative pieces; however, the essential and underlying fact is that there is nothing simple and shallow, our observances hold very little validity and are soaked in our temperament.