Home Interrupted

HOME INTERRUPTED

2024

Foreword

The Home on Me Collective focuses on making the arts accessible and inclusive in multiple facets.We represent creatives from visual artists to performance artists to writers at various stages in their careers. We seek to give creatives of various backgrounds a platform through publishing their content online, exhibitions, collaborations, meet-ups and through our podcast (to start soon).

Our goal is to blend commercial art and creative community outreach. Examples of our community work include art workshops for young refugees run by our charity, The Empty Wall Project, and our Tactile Art Workshop.

Founded by Zehra Marikar and Yaska Sahara, we’re named Home on Me collective after the first exhibition we curated as students, Having previously worked together on the student exhibition ‘Home on Me’ at Hoxton Arches while at UAL. We decided that our idea, of finding ways to express home upon one’s person, through turbulent increasingly global environments, was not done being fleshed out. As our collective grows and evolves, so do our careers and experiences. Taking a bet on ourselves just as we did when proposing the original exhibition. We hope to use our new platform to showcase and express our Kutchi and Tamil Cultural heritage respectively.

But equally to allow others to express theirs and to learn about the world and themselves.It is an endlessly but rewardingly beautiful endeavour.

We’re extremely grateful to Henrietta Scrine Contemporary for taking a bet on us as well, championing emerging DIY curation, facilitating dialogue and connection for young contemporary artists.

Introduction

Home is a boundless theme. Though often explored, there are so many emerging ways to engage with it. All individuals have their own unique voice and ideas on home and its interuptions.

Home Interrupted, seeks to subvert the banalities of the everyday, to showcase beauty in the conventionally dismissed, to question mundane routines and habits in small ways. Just as it is important to question what makes our homes, our identities and why we find comfort in what we do, it is equally important to confront the parts of ourselves and our societies that we are less inclined to engage with. Art can be a way to engage with and question the systems that make up our lives.

This mixed-media collection of works features embroidery, painting, sculpture and installation art. Artists express both themselves and their heritage, as well as the ways they view and question the world. The show explores consumption, death, discomfort, improvisation, bodily autonomy and beauty in places where one least expects to find it.

We are delighted to share our creative curation, writing and artists for the first time, starting the year with a new project, and many more to come. We seek to keep exploring ways to interrupt your everyday life, with creative expression that stimulates the eyes and the mind.

Response to Home interrupted by writer Pallavi Chamarty

Right now, I’m at the intersection of an interruption and a reintroduction - I’ve left home to study and carve a life for myself abroad and my parents will soon move back to their home town, which is not my home. When I go back to India to visit my parents, will I go home?

I know that to most, a house is not a home. I know that to some, home is people and memories. I know that some run away from their home, into the big wide world. I know that some shelter in their home, away from the big wide world. The ideas of home are almost as multiple as there are people in the world.

Right now, the world is big and wide, and I don’t have a home.

I neither ran from anywhere, nor have anywhere to run to.

My memories seem far away and the people I loved back home seem distant. And so, right now, I shelter in place. In a house and city that, at the best of times is a close approximation of home, and at the worst of times, seems determined to kick me out.

And so, right now, I shelter in place, counting the few things I’ve collected close to my chest, the new people and the young love and the new memories of a new house. And I hope and pray that they will age well. That in time, I’ll follow in parents’ footsteps.

That, in time, my love and my memories will live once again in my home. And that, above all, I will rediscover the stability and safety of homecoming.

Curators note

We aspire to use the traditionally elite-dominated field of art and curation to highlight stories not yet heard.

This project was put together as the opportunity presented itself and with a backwards process. We approached artists whom we wanted to exhibit and provide exposure, and then had to look through their works and create a theme. We came to see that a lot of artists wanted to subvert. And we went from there. Subversion of the conventional part of our ethos as a collective.

Even when a direct is found and a core exhibition idea develops, there is still much to finalise. Coming up with an exhibition name and creating a cohesive collection of works is an art in itself. Home Interrupted was named as a continuation of our eponymous debut show Home on Me. Our aim with our naming is to encapsulate our mission to bring to life exhibitions that can reimagine the art world; art that can reimagine lived experiences.

Each creative project allows us to learn more about ourselves and the creative process. We become more dynamic, more open to new ideas, and more able to adapt. Interruption being the theme of our exhibition is fitting, as we often need to rectify our small mistakes, work on things we didn’t expect to need to work on, and use both logical and artistic problem solving.

The beauty of this way of work is such that we never have a mundane work session. And we would have it no other way.

Farah Maktari is a London-based artist who explores the fluidity of cultural identity through the relationships between humans and objects, and the importance of shifting symbols within cultures. Her work seeks to create a montage of the self through various mediums, to reflect on heritage as a futuristic force that opens the door to reinvention and the revival of traditions.

Lahji No.1 is part of a collection of work that explores how traditional dances can be a practice of anti-colonialism: to resist cultures and heritage becoming stagnant and lost by bringing movement through the body. Traditional dance allows the body to take agency in its heritage and its wider scale as a culture, creating a playful and collaborative act to preserve and exchange cultures. Lahji No.1 showcases this as Lahji is a Southern Yemeni folk dance seen by the multiple figures in the painting. It reflects Yemeni traditional silhouettes and patterns, celebrating the architecture, fabric patterns, sites, and traditional dances. It also presents the richness of cultural exchange within the region through the Ottoman/ Persian manuscript style used to depict this scene.

Lahji No. 1 21 x 29.7 cm

2023 29.7 x 42 cm

Naushin, a textile artist and educator. She breaks stereotypes, one art at a time. Her mission is to challenge societal norms by breaking stereotypes through art. Naushin endeavours to dismantle stigmas and taboos, advocating for awareness on a range of issues such as menstrual health, body positivity, and mental well-being.

Through her exceptional embroidery skills, she effectively expresses her ideologies, establishing a platform that encourages individuals to embrace their true selves. Her art serves as a catalyst for many to discover and accept the inherent beauty within, fostering a positive space for self-appreciation.

In a continually shifting and conflicted global landscape, where division and discrimination persist, Zehra Marikar endeavours to make works that resonate with a sense of familiarity, comfort, and belonging. Her artistic practice revolves around narratives exploring themes of identity, language, and ancestry. Engaging with diverse mediums, she envisions art not merely as static pieces adorning a wall but as a tangible bridge connecting the threads of the past to the tapestry of the present.

Zehra's artistic inspiration emanates from personal experiences, family dynamics, and the nuances of daily life in India — ranging from vibrant advertising billboards and signs to the evocative scents of Jasmine in the air in Chennai. Her creative process involves capturing these moments through photography, transferring images onto canvas, and integrating elements such as textiles and patterns that carry sentimental value. Islamic and Indian patterns, drawn from a book on Indian textiles gifted by her mother, along with Bindi motifs, flower vines, and petals, are intricately woven into her work.

These elements are often layered with personal family photos and archival images. Texture and scent play an integral role in her art as she strives to engage the viewer’s sense of touch and smell, inviting a more visceral understanding of her work.

Lost in translation 4” x 4”

2023

Amina Ibadova is an artist coming from Moscow, whose practice reflects on contemporary history and reality as a result of events and decisions in the past. In her work she combines images and visuals from various sources on association principle, mixing objects from previous epochs, modern times and everyday life in order to show the connection between present and the past, and explain reality around us.

Triptych captures the moment of uncertainty and being placed in between options, inner questioning, with multiple opportunities and inability to make a decision at the same time. Drawings depict dwelling at present and past, memories and mind spaces simultaneously by the montage principle and different points of view within one image. Pictures remind flow of mind and hold motives of road, stops, movement and reflection, that bring feeling of instability and unsettling.

In transition 21x30 cm

2023 25x35 cm

Laura Nies is a London-based visual artist, passionate about exploring the realms of myths, theatre, bodies and queer love.

Her work delves into socio-political subjects like sexual orientation and gender identity. Drawing inspiration from nature, spiritual traditions, and everyday life.

This work is inspired by mythological creatures used in celestrial maps and old western films that I used to watch during my childhood. The horse is depicted in a state of metamorphosis, and its form is distorted like a memory.

Horse 28 x 33 cm

2023

Sarita is a Colombian aspiring artist working on capturing fluctuating moments and occasionally the creation of said moments as unimagined spaces. Lately this has led her to organize meals with room for uncertainty in the style of participatory art and, more independently, to the recording of public spaces in pastels, chalk, screen-printing, charcoal, breadcrumbs, acrylic paint or whatever means necessary.

'Produce of: Peckham', 2023, 72 x 72 x 97cm She believes art should be a shared experience that can already be found within our daily lives and so she often time channels ways of recording it. In this occasion she adapted a found readymade toy to reflect the circumstance of its cold surroundings. Dismissed alongside fruits from Peckham market, the toy ridicules the tent that was supposed to receive and release the fruits to a better future at some household.

The ‘exotic’ produce found on the streets of Peckham, alike its inhabitants, have come on long journeys that should be acknowledged, not left to rot at unease in the foreign climate.

Insuk Kwon was born in Cheongju, South Korea. She majored in fine art. She had 6 solo shows and participated in many group shows, until she moved to England. All of Kwon's early career took place in South Korea, although two of her works were displayed in France and Italy. One of her works was collected by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea. Her work was also featured in the government-approved textbook for middle school students. Kwon is showing interest in small and trivial things of everyday life. She draws attention to them by laying them on the stage. She's currently based in London.

Her selection of cupcakes, plants, newspapers, drinks bottles and Amazon packages are placed together with a playful use of scale. This juxtaposition invites us to re-evaluate the objects relationships with one other. Throughout her painting lies her signature red thread motif, connecting the various intricacies in this curious artwork. (written by Tom Cox)

Dan Rong, born in 2004, female, is currently studying BA Fine Art (3D) at Central Saint Martin’s.

Dan Rong once mentioned she feel like art is always within my life, her works are mainly inspired from life and exploring in life. She enjoy this process. Documentation and process are a very important part within my works. She is currently exploring through many mediums such as, casting, clay, photography, films, performance, wood, interactions, found/collected objects, and etc. To her, art doesn’t have to always be “theoretical”, it could also be about simple things that we observed or found in our daily lives.

In transition 21x30 cm

2023 25x35 cm

Aariya shah is a contemporary Multi media artist lost between the intersection of life half spent in India’s oceanic metropolitan and the never ending pursuit of love as the uniting discipline of humanity. the heartbeat of her art lies in the exploration of love as a binding force, transcending geographical and culture boundaries. Each creation aims to create conversation and become a visual dialogue inviting viewers into a shared narrative of human connection.

What’s essential to building a home?

What feels like home?

‘Feels like ghar’ Interactive installation

2023

Collective News

We have events, exhibitions and interviews coming up this year Home on me podcast launch Collective meet up and event Welcome event: March 2024 The empty wall x British red cross coming this year Photography exhibition with artists like Chiara Lazzari passos, Mathu photos, Zehra Marikar, Raajadarshini etc Movie Screenings and spoken word nights at Peckham plex

Afterword

It’s rare to observe how the theme develops and grows in people over time. As founding members of the exhibition Home on Me (2023), which soon developed into collective forces by Zehra Marikar and Yaska Sahara, we are honoured to support the collective’s new exhibition: “Home Interrupted”.

Memories of home are what makes us strong and resilient.

Missing home, longing for a sense of belonging, and an appreciation for our heritage and roots are all things that every Home on Me Collective member shares. This time, the collective questions the daily elements that make a house a home. They have done a fantastic job of capturing the glistening moments of the present and nuances from the past through artists’ lived experiences. This exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to reflect on what home means to them, especially during this time of crisis when everyone is going through constant displacement.

As an editorial team, our guiding principle for compiling these works of art was to uncover the personal stories behind the art and connect the common threads. Our main inspiration came from a 1913 love letter written by American cartoonist and illustrator Alfred Joseph Freud to his wife, Giulietta Fanciulli.

More than words, aesthetics delivers the feeling of home. During our previous experience at the Hoxton Arches, Sol and I discovered the feeling of home through green, earthly, muted tones with a hint of saturation and noise.

After all, a house is breakable, but a home is not. Home can be carried everywhere. Morphed or folded, it will always be in your heart.

Alice Kim, Sol Mazarredo 2023