amber hammad
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How the social, cultural and religious situations and manipulations affect one’s mindset and direct us to become who we are is a very interesting process. And my work is about these catalysts and their outcome. What we call a global villiage has absorbed more things from certain western culture or countries, instead of the flow of the energy to be moving both ways. Hence certain generations of certain places have been affected strangely to have formed a new culture. Which is neither indigenous, nor western but has its own identity. My initial works were about the acceptance of that identity, by using visual language which comprises of some local, some borrowed and some western concepts. I mostly use my own self as part of the visual, which are photographic and/or digital.
The political happenings that have shaped the history of the last decade or so have given fears an uplift .The media provokes the noises in our heads, and we are scared in anticipation. Seeing a man with a beard in our childhood symbolized somebody wise, and that image is replaced with a religious islamist fundamendalist suicide bomber! How many of these bearded men want to blast themselves off? Less than .o1 %? and maybe that .o1 % don’t even have beards! there are more chances of u being hit by a tennis ball and die than being killed in a suicide bomb attack I think .I am trying to question these fears recently, but don’t know how it will show up in the works .
Even though I believe that we all , as a human race are one , in every sense, but being that one universal entity can not begin to happen for any individual if that person does not accept who he or she is. It does not matter where, when and who you are born. What matters is the acceptability and understanding of it in relation with everything happening around you. No matter where we go or how much we try to change our identity ,weather it’s the nationality, or nick names, or religion , we will always be PAKISTANI.
