Artist Statement

Afloat with roots exposed and dangling in the air, I have seen my nation Hazara ache for an anchor as long and far as I remember. In this state of living and leaving, permanence has become a term incapable of fulfilling its promise and has been reduced to relying on its only constant and loyal shadow: memories and their archives. My work aims to recall, re-document, and propose a rich tapestry of narratives of personal archives that are often neglected or lost in more formal archival spaces. A portrayal of this transient state: Layers of all the joys and commemoration of a period lived, all the loss and longing felt in these shifting landscapes, fading away gradually and becoming memories only remembered fleetingly and in fragments. All of this, even though tucked away under the guise of ‘memories’ in safe boxes and old photo albums, are archives of a visionary past formed over the state of displacement, the struggle of generations translating languages of the ever-changing lands for our parents, of scars that have persisted beyond our physical manifestation and of this unending journey of finding a place to call ‘home’.

Saadia Batool
Artist statement June 2024