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Aisha Ajnabi
Aisha Ajnabi is an imagined entity created by Umulkhayr and is conceptualised as her ‘art other’. ‘Her’ is this case meaning the convening of Umulkhayr and other collaborators, which include the ancestors and the more-than-human world, without whom this work could not exist. Aisha describes themselves as a ‘slow artist’ that creates works in series, often working on a number of series in parallel which each body of work taking a number of years to materialise. To read more about Aisha and their practice, please see the about page.
Aisha Ajnabi - Selected Works
Officer am I (too far gone) | Photographic Works
The photographic works in this wider, multi medium series, document a three hour long performance which involved Aisha walking the length of Newport Road in Cardiff, from 5:30pm, re-enacting a historical event from the 1920s where a Somali seaman was once told by a police officer that he could not do the same.
The performance was a ritualistic reclamation of space, in response to the racialised policing of Black migrant dock workers in Cardiff. The photographic works in this series seek to make the presence of ancestors visible, featuring multiple depictions of Ajnabi within each image, symbolising their presence. Their works in this exhibition emphasise the legacies of colonial policing in the UK whilst honoring the ancestors who anchor the series.
These works were shown in a duo exhibition at Oriel y Bont Gallery in Trefforest alongside Melissa Rodrigues, initially as a part of FfotoCymru, Wales’ International Festival of Photography.
OF THE
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BY ASSOCIATION |
film and performance work
is a multi-medium devotional piece that meditates on the contemporary legacies of working class housewives, calling you to consider how oppressive hierarchies are maintained even in liberatory movements, that place ‘workers’ on a pedestal while continuing to invisiblise the reproductive labour without which workers would not be able to continue selling their labour to the capltialist class. This piece incorporates elements of experimental sound and video collage situated both in nostalgia and the present day, and is punctuated by calls to contemplate how our struggles are as interdependent as we are, by exploring the contemporary relevances of the experiences of liberation struggles through the lens of domesticity.
(Commissioned by Cinenova persented at Bluecoat. Liverpool).
Bricks and other bodies: an odinance | sound work
The vocalisations that lay the foundation of this soundpiece are a collection and layering of sounds recieved from the bricks the artist collected to make their shrine work ‘Vessel Vestige’ (see below), and that the artist understands to be a imparting of the divine grace that makes legible the spirit not only of the clay that these bricks were made from, but also the connection to the labourers that made and laid these bricks. These sounds are paired with the artist’s meditation on the embodied experience of manual labour.
This work is a part of Aisha’s ongoing ‘This is a Convening of Clay’s Children’ series started in 2022 and that are the result of an exploration into ritual and differing value systems as they relate to manual labour, the earth and their shared artefacts.
(presented as a part of Local 37, LUMIN x Solistice Radio)
What’s held / what remains, When vessel and vestige came
to stay, came to pray
| performance lecture
“Only bricks are both skin and bones, they provide both finishing and firmness, what weight they hold, I feel that in the many moments I’ve held them more recently.”
“After a day spent reading what is clear evidence of a sustained dedication that resembles a form of faith, but that is never directly spoken to, I plan to email the British Brick Society. As they provide an enquiries email address on their website, offering to answer any questions people may have about old bricks. The way people of polite society tend to do, performing helpfulness or at least the facade of it.”
“The brick’s colouring is a carrying forward of place, of earth, as most brick factories of this time would collect
clay from the surrounding areas, is that not a form of storytelling.”
“In his poem On Work, Khalil Gibran says “you work to keep pace with the earth”, when I read this I’m reminded
of the perpetual motion that is the earth, so much so, you’d mistake it for stillness at a glance. But through work that requires motion you can learn how to better embody space in relation to others, here is a kind of awareness that does not ask you to forget or erase yourself in search of an overvalued ‘objectivity’.”
- quotes from ‘
What’s held / what remains, When vessel and vestige came to stay, came to pray’
This perfomance lecture is an assemblage of research materials, personal and social histories and poetry that the artist collected and wrote and performed as a part of g39’s UNITe artist residency, depicting the varied and nuanced realtionships that humans can and do form with bricks.
This work is a part of Aisha’s ongoing ‘This is a Convening of Clay’s Children’ series started in 2022 and that are the result of an exploration into ritual and differing value systems as they relate to manual labour, the earth and their shared artefacts.
Vessel Vestige | sculpture/installation work
This sculpture evokes the ancestral technology of shrine building to prompt reverence for overlooked objects that have served us, and others like us, as a reexamination of the concepts of wisdom and afterlife within the context of the inanimate materials we live amongst and within.
This work is a part of Aisha’s ongoing ‘This is a Convening of Clay’s Children’ series started in 2022 and that are the result of an exploration into ritual and differing value systems as they relate to manual labour, the earth and their shared artefacts.
