Questioning Yourself About Yourself

A voice record log from February

There have been many inconsistencies in the stories I have heard surrounding the circumstances of my father’s birth and this is very discouraging in the process of this project. How do I begin to fill the blank space and emptiness and get answers to many questions I have, as I embark on this journey into the history of my family. There’s nothing to connect her with or to its almost as though she never existed. 

Simple questions like what was her name, who was her family, where she was from...

“Where” brings me to the idea of maps and contours... assuming and expressing possibilities of the “where”?

What did she look like? Brings me think about portraits and faces, they would be propositions of an identity. I stared playing with shifts like the one in our Ankara fabrics, yes those involuntarily mistakes that became a trend.

How do I express an imperfectness, an incompleteness... loss, vacuum...

As I begin to ask these questions I am trying to ask myself the same, not yet though, but I am thinking about why I am not asking myself these questions, and that is because I assume I know the answers. But do i really? 

Untitled drawing and collage. 2014

What is her name

Where is she from

What did she look like

Did she marry and have other children

What was the colour of her hair

Was she tall

Was she white

Why did she leave

Did she come back

Did she try to find her son

These same questions I ask about her is what I am beginning to ask myself, who am I? Where am I from, What do I look like, What do I like?

A series a questions as simple as they are, will eventually matter in staying relevant in time, questions I should ask myself in order not to disappear. 

There is a certain fear that looms around, the fear of not wanting to be forgotten, and now consciously I feel the need to write myself into history, trying to exist by force, writing my name and fixing myself into time, its by force oo.

Women need to begin to question themselves about themselves. 

From my mother’s side on the other hand, my mother could narrate the history of her family from both her mother’s side and father’s side, the road they treaded, the journeys they made, they children they had, the houses they lived in, the food they ate, all in words. But not many have heard these stories...

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Present Reality

I changed my mind about the images, the selected image form part of a series of drawings and collages I am currently making for an installation piece. So I have decided I will include one or two of these drawings in each post. They are about a4 sized and the more I draw, the larger the installation, its better you see each one individually cos when they are brought together... ok I don't know, let's see how it works out.

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