so it’s a very big shoes to fill and I
think very well there are all sorts of
talents in the world and skills that
we’re bestowed with and I think we know
that already that this is what we’re
trying to struggle right that’s why we
go to college we try to learn or find a
skill for ourselves that that is
supporters for the rest of our life but
also give meaning to our existence
that’s what we’re trying to do it’s good
it is loud enough ok so um I just want
to reflect on sort of a bit of the
journey that I’ve taken based on being
an artist and where I am and what does
it mean to be an artist you know because
you know when when I introduce myself I
say I’m from Earth hi and I’m an artist
what does that mean because a lot of
different types of artists and arts
exist in the world right and if you
think about it every child that we come
across is an artist of sorts right they
know how to build something they know
how to talk their way to their getting
an ice-cream
they know how to color outside of the
Apple or inside and that’s that’s an art
form that’s a skill so what is it that
we mean when we say that either
professionally or in terms of an
identity we own this world or this
meaning of being an artist what does it
mean um so I find that I’m two people
I’m not one
I’m the regular person me I and I’m the
artist so there is there is space that
is being a shared by two people inside
me the artist me and the regularly
and yeah I mean you can call it being
slightly bipolar short but the truth of
the matter is that there’s always the
struggle as to which part of me runs the
bigger space because you see the regular
me wants to you know do the regular
people stuff by pretty clothes wear
makeup you know I’ll be able to hold on
watch TV or microwave my pasta eat it
quickly go to bed early
that’s when the artist in me wakes up
and she just she’s very critical and she
goes on and on about all the things I’ve
not been able to do in life you know all
the things I need to improve come on
quickly obviously that kind of a thing
and all the mistakes that I’ve made in
my 33 years of life it is this constant
nagging as to what means to be and what
needs to improve what needs to be better
and that’s always it’s always there at
the back of my mind I think it’s always
there for a lot of us I feel like
listening to that price and sort of like
conveying it and how much how much
moving it is this kind of a negotiation
that I’m referring to that I go through
and that a lot of you I think go through
so the artist in me doesn’t want to make
safe choices yeah if I let her she
probably wants to I run around on the
pump inside naked and call it art and
you know the other side of me in the
regular main wants to make pretty
pictures and you know sort of cooking on
the walls and like smile sweetly a kind
of a thing right um but then
have to at some point come to a
negotiation between the reality of life
or the everyday things that are pulling
you back things that are working against
you things like you know having to pay
the bills things like having to tend to
your family your parents your young
children things like having your car
broken down on the way to an important
work or meeting how do we constantly
make these choices where we set our
priorities every day and we make these
decisions but this is important to us
how do we decide that you know today
singing a certain soil or painting a
certain painting is the most important
thing for me to do and I need to believe
in it enough that is going to get me
somewhere how do we put eldest penis in
an object or an action it’s very very
hard but we have to make these decisions
and we have to believe in ourselves to
keep going that’s how we’re able to
write books that’s how we are able to
write poems or make funnies if you don’t
believe in us we won’t be able to do it
you have to listen to that nagging voice
at the back of our mind so I’m gonna
start with showing a little bit of my
work and this first work is banana video
2006
I’d report
okay so this word was made in 2006 in
Lahore at that time I was in my final
year of theses undergraduate degree
National College parts and I was going
through some very serious health issues
I was also when I’m trying to give my
pieces as I said in my final year and
liquid that was said my beauty life was
a little bit about those daily struggle
of keeping up with my minimum
nourishment to keep going and part of it
also was to keep on making work a
physical kind of labor that goes into
making that happen so I was going
through this eating disorder and I like
to be very careful about what I put
consume and heat down and this was one
of the only things that I could eat so I
started having bananas in the studios I
would keep like a bunch or to dozens of
bananas whenever I felt hungry or I felt
like I couldn’t keep growing anymore I
would have the couple of them and
struggle to keep it down and just keep a
point the planner video was literally an
on tape free a reenactment of the steely
activity that I was going through video
I eat 14 bananas and you didn’t see that
this is the first one and I’m struggling
to keep the food down and after that it
got quite gory and a little explicit so
that’s not further work anymore and this
is a way in which we are just me and the
really with the health issues in the
body and the physicality that needed to
be saved
negotiated and made a work out of it so
this work is very real it was very at
that moment of something that was going
on
in my life and with my body I’m going to
belong to another world
okay so there’s nothing extra
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
all right so this video keeps going on
and on it’s a half an hour long video in
which we keep on chanting this on repeat
till we get very very tired and really
confused and we start to stumble on our
words and one person is going forward
and one is you know sort of like lagging
behind and let me just give you a little
background of this work so um in our
salty there are certain fixed ideas
about what women are what they do and
what kind of things they like what kind
of throats to wear right I mean it’s not
a joke that we have like what a hundred
types of lawn prints all with flowers
right I mean there must be some idea as
to what kind of women or what kind of
clothes women like to wear right so um
there are very fixed ideas some of these
ideas have even graduated to the level
of facts and these facts come very handy
when we have to assess a woman’s quality
in terms of matchmaking
marriage you know we can easily go into
okay so check check check check these
things she knows she must be a good girl
and what they started to do was my
collaborator and I we started listing
down all these things that we thought
that were these facts these ideas and
certain ideals that we had about women
and all of them were actually true now I
mean we lived in the city in hate each
actually have two brothers and a sister
that kind of thing I really like what
what are these facts can we try and
learn them by heart I’m just kind of
back and forth motion or kindly learning
something that we associate usually with
learning a Holy Scripture that idea
comes from usually learning something by
heart or committing it to memory rather
than actually trying to understand
something and that was very very
important to us that these are
prescribed notions prescribed notions or
rules of gender in the society that we
need to learn by heart and that’s it we
can keep growing bird bird for the next
few years so it’s been on nine or ten
years since this book was made but I
feel like it’s still true I’m still the
same person you know there’s still
expectation for me to like the color
pink more than any other color and I’m
gonna move on to another work so in this
work um how I was using the sort of
reality of the rings around P to my
advantage I was
using the witnesses my vulnerabilities
as my strengths was that when I moved to
the US Chicago in 2009 as part of the
Fulbright Program I mean one of the term
like culture shock the trucks that I got
was the idea of eating alone not in the
sense of like yawning alone but more
like and you’re eating by yourself in
front of somebody and you’re not
offering them to eat you know I mean in
front of our culture we all like to just
eat a lot right but you also I can share
our food with other people so you have
half the food sandwich and we like you
know like just like to share food that’s
how we are this is who we are and
obviously there’s a cultural difference
and it’s it’s not rude at all to just
keep on like chewing your sandwich and
you know talking to another person who
you don’t offer your food – and very
very important are kind of quite a
research for me because food as a means
of like what it does to your physicality
it’s a form of nourishment it’s also a
sexually charged medium but it’s also a
social behavior it conducts people to
behave in certain ways in certain facts
so the project is a project in which
again my celebrated of you and I are
decided to host complete strangers to
our apartment with this and out through
like a local show through friends of
friends and we just sent out this invite
causing if you haven’t met you are
invited to dinner just you know email us
show up on that specific evening and I
had these crazy experiences there was
somebody who showed up who didn’t want
to leave and again it’s a it’s you know
a cultural thing the Americans later
told us Hank
but you’re just like get up start
brushing your teeth and be like okay I’m
going to bed
are you gonna leave now but we didn’t
know how to do that so we just kept sat
there and sat there and sat there too
like 11:30 it’s been like four hours
this person wouldn’t link each other
like we have another hands what how
are you gonna make this person leave and
the person actually said decide I’m
gonna couch I could crash the first time
there every meeting so we have
experiences but we also came across
Hammersmith and we had some kind of a
relationship there is a certain sense of
belonging that comes with knowing
somebody in a city in a strange city and
this idea of being new in town and
you’re just in that town right but have
to subvert that and become the host and
this idea of like on hospitality house
hospitality P plays a key role in this
negotiation between the host and the
guests and who has the more power over
you the guest or the host
you’re extending an alliance to somebody
and that way we extended our sort of
Pakistani routes into the city of
Chicago
well this last I like to mention she was
the first get that we ever had an other
apartment as part of the perfect project
and she had not known what she was
signing up signing up for when she read
the project to affect possibly rename
this project over because we were
finding this whole South Asian until
about you know the whole going at the
wall of your house when our guest is
coming right and we thought that you
know this idea of like if a guest is
going to be coming at your house there’s
essentially a tour somewhere that is
going to draw and you’re like okay I
guess it’s coming so we have to feel
published in the invite and shouldn’t
know what to expect so she brought a bed
floor with her to the dinner yeah it was
disturbing just like that and she want
you to give to to us why don’t you take
it with you take it to the next person
she eventually took it with her I do
have a photo of that read the world
I have been to four different countries
with this project where we have hosted
guests in countries where we have never
been before and this photograph is from
the episode that we conducted in the UK
and this gentleman was a writer who was
writing on August at this special
character is that he had about his book
in which they were going to be two twins
like the two brother and sister or two
sisters and they’re going to be artists
and when we found out that we were
conducting this project he came to
research us while we were researching
him
yeah the next project this idea this
idea of food and hospitality to a very
deep root into my factors and I’m very
interested in how that shapes identity
and self and existence so that happened
in my life soon after when I came back
from the US and I came for an interview
at Nast here to apply for a position of
lecturer at the school of art design in
architecture they offered me a job
some like really sloppy salary and I was
like I’ll take it you know what the hell
I’ll just move this on about now so I’ve
become this disparate and if a person
who can just move anywhere with these
bags and try to you know find new
friends and make art and whatever so at
that time we didn’t have a competition
to offer me all right at the beginning
and I was looking for you know a place
to stay in the city and it turns out
that I as a single woman could not both
a hotel room in my name anywhere in the
cities of sama Vidal pindy I was like
mind-blowing for me like I have just
been like around half the world having
so many countries taking my work show my
name so they kept on saying a husband
I do not have a husband
[Music]
[Music]
Nakula what’s going on sir at that time
I mean when I found myself part in
different peoples guest rooms and
children’s room and friends and
relatives and acquaintances I was just
like all over the place
I would stay for like you know five days
in somebody’s house and be like what we
thank you and just move to somebody
else’s house and in the meantime I was
you know making us to give me in
combination on campus so I was being
very disoriented I was being like I the
artist in me was dying
it was find out if I could find the
fodder for my practice and my distance
and I was looking for a studio I didn’t
have one I didn’t have the right kind of
tools in the space to make all right and
I was feeling very um out of my back so
when I started doing was I started
photographing the people’s families
where I was staying and if you come into
this control project where I
photographed a lot of different peoples
of yes houses and homes and inside of
their spaces so these are just different
people’s rooms with my stuff and you
know like my feet sort of like in the
photograph and this is another
photograph with the same kind of a thing
and I’m just showing to it but there are
like a lot of them in which whole idea
is to investigate how people live and
how you as a guest become an owner of a
borrowed space
[Music]
[Applause]
think very well there are all sorts of
talents in the world and skills that
we’re bestowed with and I think we know
that already that this is what we’re
trying to struggle right that’s why we
go to college we try to learn or find a
skill for ourselves that that is
supporters for the rest of our life but
also give meaning to our existence
that’s what we’re trying to do it’s good
it is loud enough ok so um I just want
to reflect on sort of a bit of the
journey that I’ve taken based on being
an artist and where I am and what does
it mean to be an artist you know because
you know when when I introduce myself I
say I’m from Earth hi and I’m an artist
what does that mean because a lot of
different types of artists and arts
exist in the world right and if you
think about it every child that we come
across is an artist of sorts right they
know how to build something they know
how to talk their way to their getting
an ice-cream
they know how to color outside of the
Apple or inside and that’s that’s an art
form that’s a skill so what is it that
we mean when we say that either
professionally or in terms of an
identity we own this world or this
meaning of being an artist what does it
mean um so I find that I’m two people
I’m not one
I’m the regular person me I and I’m the
artist so there is there is space that
is being a shared by two people inside
me the artist me and the regularly
and yeah I mean you can call it being
slightly bipolar short but the truth of
the matter is that there’s always the
struggle as to which part of me runs the
bigger space because you see the regular
me wants to you know do the regular
people stuff by pretty clothes wear
makeup you know I’ll be able to hold on
watch TV or microwave my pasta eat it
quickly go to bed early
that’s when the artist in me wakes up
and she just she’s very critical and she
goes on and on about all the things I’ve
not been able to do in life you know all
the things I need to improve come on
quickly obviously that kind of a thing
and all the mistakes that I’ve made in
my 33 years of life it is this constant
nagging as to what means to be and what
needs to improve what needs to be better
and that’s always it’s always there at
the back of my mind I think it’s always
there for a lot of us I feel like
listening to that price and sort of like
conveying it and how much how much
moving it is this kind of a negotiation
that I’m referring to that I go through
and that a lot of you I think go through
so the artist in me doesn’t want to make
safe choices yeah if I let her she
probably wants to I run around on the
pump inside naked and call it art and
you know the other side of me in the
regular main wants to make pretty
pictures and you know sort of cooking on
the walls and like smile sweetly a kind
of a thing right um but then
have to at some point come to a
negotiation between the reality of life
or the everyday things that are pulling
you back things that are working against
you things like you know having to pay
the bills things like having to tend to
your family your parents your young
children things like having your car
broken down on the way to an important
work or meeting how do we constantly
make these choices where we set our
priorities every day and we make these
decisions but this is important to us
how do we decide that you know today
singing a certain soil or painting a
certain painting is the most important
thing for me to do and I need to believe
in it enough that is going to get me
somewhere how do we put eldest penis in
an object or an action it’s very very
hard but we have to make these decisions
and we have to believe in ourselves to
keep going that’s how we’re able to
write books that’s how we are able to
write poems or make funnies if you don’t
believe in us we won’t be able to do it
you have to listen to that nagging voice
at the back of our mind so I’m gonna
start with showing a little bit of my
work and this first work is banana video
2006
I’d report
okay so this word was made in 2006 in
Lahore at that time I was in my final
year of theses undergraduate degree
National College parts and I was going
through some very serious health issues
I was also when I’m trying to give my
pieces as I said in my final year and
liquid that was said my beauty life was
a little bit about those daily struggle
of keeping up with my minimum
nourishment to keep going and part of it
also was to keep on making work a
physical kind of labor that goes into
making that happen so I was going
through this eating disorder and I like
to be very careful about what I put
consume and heat down and this was one
of the only things that I could eat so I
started having bananas in the studios I
would keep like a bunch or to dozens of
bananas whenever I felt hungry or I felt
like I couldn’t keep growing anymore I
would have the couple of them and
struggle to keep it down and just keep a
point the planner video was literally an
on tape free a reenactment of the steely
activity that I was going through video
I eat 14 bananas and you didn’t see that
this is the first one and I’m struggling
to keep the food down and after that it
got quite gory and a little explicit so
that’s not further work anymore and this
is a way in which we are just me and the
really with the health issues in the
body and the physicality that needed to
be saved
negotiated and made a work out of it so
this work is very real it was very at
that moment of something that was going
on
in my life and with my body I’m going to
belong to another world
okay so there’s nothing extra
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
all right so this video keeps going on
and on it’s a half an hour long video in
which we keep on chanting this on repeat
till we get very very tired and really
confused and we start to stumble on our
words and one person is going forward
and one is you know sort of like lagging
behind and let me just give you a little
background of this work so um in our
salty there are certain fixed ideas
about what women are what they do and
what kind of things they like what kind
of throats to wear right I mean it’s not
a joke that we have like what a hundred
types of lawn prints all with flowers
right I mean there must be some idea as
to what kind of women or what kind of
clothes women like to wear right so um
there are very fixed ideas some of these
ideas have even graduated to the level
of facts and these facts come very handy
when we have to assess a woman’s quality
in terms of matchmaking
marriage you know we can easily go into
okay so check check check check these
things she knows she must be a good girl
and what they started to do was my
collaborator and I we started listing
down all these things that we thought
that were these facts these ideas and
certain ideals that we had about women
and all of them were actually true now I
mean we lived in the city in hate each
actually have two brothers and a sister
that kind of thing I really like what
what are these facts can we try and
learn them by heart I’m just kind of
back and forth motion or kindly learning
something that we associate usually with
learning a Holy Scripture that idea
comes from usually learning something by
heart or committing it to memory rather
than actually trying to understand
something and that was very very
important to us that these are
prescribed notions prescribed notions or
rules of gender in the society that we
need to learn by heart and that’s it we
can keep growing bird bird for the next
few years so it’s been on nine or ten
years since this book was made but I
feel like it’s still true I’m still the
same person you know there’s still
expectation for me to like the color
pink more than any other color and I’m
gonna move on to another work so in this
work um how I was using the sort of
reality of the rings around P to my
advantage I was
using the witnesses my vulnerabilities
as my strengths was that when I moved to
the US Chicago in 2009 as part of the
Fulbright Program I mean one of the term
like culture shock the trucks that I got
was the idea of eating alone not in the
sense of like yawning alone but more
like and you’re eating by yourself in
front of somebody and you’re not
offering them to eat you know I mean in
front of our culture we all like to just
eat a lot right but you also I can share
our food with other people so you have
half the food sandwich and we like you
know like just like to share food that’s
how we are this is who we are and
obviously there’s a cultural difference
and it’s it’s not rude at all to just
keep on like chewing your sandwich and
you know talking to another person who
you don’t offer your food – and very
very important are kind of quite a
research for me because food as a means
of like what it does to your physicality
it’s a form of nourishment it’s also a
sexually charged medium but it’s also a
social behavior it conducts people to
behave in certain ways in certain facts
so the project is a project in which
again my celebrated of you and I are
decided to host complete strangers to
our apartment with this and out through
like a local show through friends of
friends and we just sent out this invite
causing if you haven’t met you are
invited to dinner just you know email us
show up on that specific evening and I
had these crazy experiences there was
somebody who showed up who didn’t want
to leave and again it’s a it’s you know
a cultural thing the Americans later
told us Hank
but you’re just like get up start
brushing your teeth and be like okay I’m
going to bed
are you gonna leave now but we didn’t
know how to do that so we just kept sat
there and sat there and sat there too
like 11:30 it’s been like four hours
this person wouldn’t link each other
like we have another hands what how
are you gonna make this person leave and
the person actually said decide I’m
gonna couch I could crash the first time
there every meeting so we have
experiences but we also came across
Hammersmith and we had some kind of a
relationship there is a certain sense of
belonging that comes with knowing
somebody in a city in a strange city and
this idea of being new in town and
you’re just in that town right but have
to subvert that and become the host and
this idea of like on hospitality house
hospitality P plays a key role in this
negotiation between the host and the
guests and who has the more power over
you the guest or the host
you’re extending an alliance to somebody
and that way we extended our sort of
Pakistani routes into the city of
Chicago
well this last I like to mention she was
the first get that we ever had an other
apartment as part of the perfect project
and she had not known what she was
signing up signing up for when she read
the project to affect possibly rename
this project over because we were
finding this whole South Asian until
about you know the whole going at the
wall of your house when our guest is
coming right and we thought that you
know this idea of like if a guest is
going to be coming at your house there’s
essentially a tour somewhere that is
going to draw and you’re like okay I
guess it’s coming so we have to feel
published in the invite and shouldn’t
know what to expect so she brought a bed
floor with her to the dinner yeah it was
disturbing just like that and she want
you to give to to us why don’t you take
it with you take it to the next person
she eventually took it with her I do
have a photo of that read the world
I have been to four different countries
with this project where we have hosted
guests in countries where we have never
been before and this photograph is from
the episode that we conducted in the UK
and this gentleman was a writer who was
writing on August at this special
character is that he had about his book
in which they were going to be two twins
like the two brother and sister or two
sisters and they’re going to be artists
and when we found out that we were
conducting this project he came to
research us while we were researching
him
yeah the next project this idea this
idea of food and hospitality to a very
deep root into my factors and I’m very
interested in how that shapes identity
and self and existence so that happened
in my life soon after when I came back
from the US and I came for an interview
at Nast here to apply for a position of
lecturer at the school of art design in
architecture they offered me a job
some like really sloppy salary and I was
like I’ll take it you know what the hell
I’ll just move this on about now so I’ve
become this disparate and if a person
who can just move anywhere with these
bags and try to you know find new
friends and make art and whatever so at
that time we didn’t have a competition
to offer me all right at the beginning
and I was looking for you know a place
to stay in the city and it turns out
that I as a single woman could not both
a hotel room in my name anywhere in the
cities of sama Vidal pindy I was like
mind-blowing for me like I have just
been like around half the world having
so many countries taking my work show my
name so they kept on saying a husband
I do not have a husband
[Music]
[Music]
Nakula what’s going on sir at that time
I mean when I found myself part in
different peoples guest rooms and
children’s room and friends and
relatives and acquaintances I was just
like all over the place
I would stay for like you know five days
in somebody’s house and be like what we
thank you and just move to somebody
else’s house and in the meantime I was
you know making us to give me in
combination on campus so I was being
very disoriented I was being like I the
artist in me was dying
it was find out if I could find the
fodder for my practice and my distance
and I was looking for a studio I didn’t
have one I didn’t have the right kind of
tools in the space to make all right and
I was feeling very um out of my back so
when I started doing was I started
photographing the people’s families
where I was staying and if you come into
this control project where I
photographed a lot of different peoples
of yes houses and homes and inside of
their spaces so these are just different
people’s rooms with my stuff and you
know like my feet sort of like in the
photograph and this is another
photograph with the same kind of a thing
and I’m just showing to it but there are
like a lot of them in which whole idea
is to investigate how people live and
how you as a guest become an owner of a
borrowed space
[Music]
[Applause]
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