The Five K's (2 selected carpets on show for this exhibition)

Jasleen Kaur is an artist living and working in London. Her work is an ongoing exploration into the malleability of culture and the layering of social histories within the material and immaterial things that surround us. Her practice explores diasporic identity, personal and colonial histories. She works with sculpture, video, sound and writing.
Recent and ongoing commissions include Wellcome Collection, UP Projects, Glasgow Women’s Library, Market Gallery, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Eastside Projects and Hollybush Gardens. Her work is part of the permanent collection of Touchstones Rochdale, Royal College of Art and Crafts Council.

http://jasleenkaur.co.uk/

Budimom at the Supermarket
, 2015
Miraca, 2019

I need the onions before it rains, 2019

Jā'ō Mārakīṭa, 2019

Thorka Beans and Chips, 2019
Transitory, 2019

Dreams of Green Beans, 2019 > https://youtu.be/MEmKaBATGeA

Navi Kaur is an artist and educator based in Birmingham. Navi works closely with her paternal grandparents to better understand her own heritage and culture through feelings of displacement in organised environments and highlights the importance of celebrating cultural diversity through cross collaboration. Inspired by an archive of family photographs found in her grandparents’ home, she produces work in response to the lives they have built here in the U.K, encompassing their Sikh faith and daily regimes, working predominantly through the processes of digital photography, film and installation.

Inspired by the lives of her paternal grandparents, Surinder (‘Budimom’) and Karamjit (‘Baba Ji’), Navi’s work intimately and playfully documents themes of domestic, cultural, and spiritual significance. She traces interpersonal dialogues and daily activities through digital photography, film, and installation, demonstrating the abounding resilience of first-generation immigrants, the wonders of the everyday, and the compelling expressions of the Sikh Dharam. Thus, Navi’s artistic process doubles as a method of self-inquiry, facilitating investigations into the physical and intangible dimensions of her cultural heritage.

Navi is currently researching and documenting the lives of the South Asian communities who have settled and work in the rural West Midlands for a photographic series commissioned by GRAIN Projects. She has exhibited her work across the UK and overseas, including Reminders Photography Stronghold, Coventry Biennial, Manchester Contemporary, Recent Activity, ORT Gallery and Gallery Celine. Upcoming shows include a solo exhibition at New Art Exchange and group exhibitions at Grand Union Gallery, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum and Moseley Road Baths.

Navi is also a qualified arts educator, formally teaching at a Handsworth-based secondary school and facilitates workshops in artist-led and museum spaces.

Written by Harr-Joht Takhar

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CURATORS REVIEW

I was interested to share Navi Kaur’s work for Recipes For Resistance exhibition due to my admiration and respect for Navi’s choice to work so intimately with her grandparents in situating everyday domestic life. These open up to wider issues regarding migration/immigration, identity, familial and relational connectivity, community, growth, nurture and documentation of memory. Within this exploration it also inevitably brings in political questions of separation, racism and religion and culture, as well as gender, un/belonging and ageism.

As someone who is South Asian and socialised within Sikhi culture I feel a resonance and draw to Navi’s work but I simultaneously recognise that this also comes from a lack or missing pieces, since I do not have/ did not grow up with Grandparents and with a further disconnection to relatives derived from being trans and queer which caused cultural dissonance. I’m am also trans~queer ageing and questioning what age means for me in my cultural contexts. This creates a specific desire to see these narratives and experiences as outlined in Navi’s photographic, video and publication works which are also extremely accessible as art works and beyond. They ‘speak’ of/to the everyday whilst using everyday accessible mediums to communicate content to both art/non art audiences. My specific life experiences draw me to Navi’s work but over the years through conversations, I have ascertained that there is a distinctive lack of art, but also general discussion and interaction regarding cross~generational exchange and learning, for various reasons such as ageism and migrant struggles. This, I believe, means Navi’s work will appeal to a variety of audiences who are affected by these issues, whether they realise it or not, yet. I do not think Navi’s work is heavily discoursed, it fluctuates between simplicity of everyday life and the wider complexity of detail and issues it raises, and this I feel allows it to appeal to a multitude of people, offering various entry points and possibilities of/for digestion.

Written by Raju Rage

https://www.navikaur.com/

Works:
If My Rolling Pin Could Talk
Roti, Resilience, Reparenting

Repetition and the Sacred

The act of making roti, especially for a large extended family, is highly repetitive. Sometimes you can end up making 20-30 rotis in one go. Making more than necessary is seen as frivolous. The roti maker is usually the last to eat – making sure that everyone has exactly the amount they require. Roti is seen as sacred. If there does happen to be any left over, the roti is broken down into smaller morsels and given to the birds to eat. As such, no grain is gone to waste.

The Rolling Pin

Using the rolling pin I explore print making and the process of repetition by engraving, scoring, and reshaping the pin. In a decisive act of transformation, I subvert the use of a rolling pin, from a traditional domestic utensil used in South Asian staple food, and turn it into a print making object that can convey message and tell a story.

Pattern and Allegory

The limited surface area of the rolling pin means the printed outcome is a continuous repeat pattern. Using the same motif, but changing the dialogue and internal thoughts of the characters, I ask, can we change our relationship to a situation based on how we think about it? The final strip of the three, in yellow, suggests a re-working of the archetypal South Asian family dynamic. Can we heal and move forward whilst holding on to cultural heritage that provides identity and binds us together? Can I begin to cook roti again, shedding the old limited notions I’d learnt, and find new meaning for roti in my life? And most importantly, can we do this together?

Sabba Khan is an architectural designer & graphic novelist. Her work is an exploration of first world city life as a second generation Azad Kashmiri Muslim migrant. She explores themes of belonging, memory and identity. Using a hybrid of text and visual commentary, she sits at the intersection of visual storytelling, poetry, and spatial form. Her forthcoming graphic novel is due for release in 2021 by Myriad Editions and is funded by Jerwood Arts. She has been book cover artist and contributor to Eisner Award Winning ‘Drawing Power’ a Best Comics of 2019 from New York Times. Clients include SOAS University, The British Library and the London Borough of Newham.

http://www.sabbakhan.com/

Never Send a Plate Back Empty, 2020

An interview with Khala Aunty, a Panjabi woman and renowned cook who migrated from Bengal to Pakistan after her marriage. She speaks about her life long passion of cooking from the age of 12, Bengali and Pakistani recipes, life back in the day, discussing traditional and modern techniques and methods, customs and culture and the mystery of her missing unpublished recipe book! (in dialogue with Fahro Aunty)
Listen to the audio here: http://www.rajurage.com/2020/10/raju-rage-recipes-for-resistance/

Khala Aunty and Fahro Aunty, 2020

Eat While You Feed? 2020

An autoethnographic documentary of the Shah family in Cambridge UK that explores health and wellbeing, care, time, labour, lineage, tradition and archetypes, gender and cross generational and cultural exchange and unconventional family recipes.

https://vimeo.com/460764102