I see my son Moses, 3 in October, grasping for complete sentences now to communicate, reaching for the fullness of a new language that we share, and I realise, here in my studio as I do experiments with the ideas and material I have so far, that I am doing a similar thing. I am expanding my visual language slowly and sometimes I feel very young in the process. I have been trying out using the name scripts from the groups so far to sketch out a potential large scale horizontal wall work for the first gallery space.
I used the name scripts from the last sessions to do a 1:2 scale sketch on my studio wall, and am now seeing how I can integrate ‘micro-script’ into the lines of the names. I’m trying it with bias binding and writing on this, then pinning it to the wall. It’s very DIY but it gives me a sense of where it might or might not go. Nothing’s fixed. I guess I knew I would want to take the idea of the poem bound around ‘Mother Tongue’ further, and a 2 dimensional version is something I want to explore. I’m clear that the first Gallery needs to be 2D, and that multi-lingual writing and mirroring will be the main channel of ideas. Until I have finished the cycle of engagement, in early august – it’s impossible to define what the content of these walls will be, but some elements are becoming clear already. On Monday I have a meeting with the Heads of Design , Participation and Art Handling and Louise so I’m working on more detailed drawings, as I have already submitted aerial plans which have raised a lot of questions and I’m taking it as far as I can until I have all material after the sessions are done. Time is tight so this focuses the mind but I am aware too that I have to follow the content to create the final form, or it won’t work.
Last Friday’s session with Paiwand at their home was challenging. The only way to get the six boys in the house into the living room in the first place was to use old school tactics and offer to draw their portraits, which I managed to do with three of them. The others were nowhere to be seen. I have to say I really enjoyed the experience of drawing them, (and they seemed to too). It’s been a while since I drew anyone apart from my children…Two of them, Zenullah and Ramatullah, then stayed to work on name scripts and we tried to talk about meanings of names but there was no translation present in the morning and this was tricky — I was frustrated at my poor Farsi and these kind of situations increase my desire to start learning properly again, which I guess is a good thing.
With Paiwand, I have been limited to these two names only for the name script, since, after the morning session, all the boys went off unaccompanied to the Mosque and never returned, leaving us with one of their college friends, Milan, and Sami the key worker. He later commented that he should have gone with them to ensure they returned but didn’t want to leave us on our own. We were a bit gutted that they didn’t bother to return and got distracted with having lunch with Mosque buddies. But then they are teenagers and a hard to reach audience so it goes with the territory – an attitude of extreme flexibility was required. It raises lots of questions for me as it felt like in the first session they were really engaged and the feedback wa very positive. We learnt quite a bit about Gujarat from Milan and about Sami’s background and aspirations. He has been here in London for 15 years (he came with his entire family) so he is a good reference point for the boys.
