Join us as Hira explore the years-old South-Asian cultural ritual, ‘Khatam’. Khatam consists of people gathering to make repetitive prayers on date seeds or beads that are strung together in the form of a tasbeeh. Khatam is a community-based spiritual practice that encourages people, especially women, to come together and share their thoughts, prayers and experiences.
Hira will be examining whether we should revive traditional rituals to reconnect with ourselves and others, whilst also exploring the ways in which daily affirmations as endorsed by many social media gurus, life coaches and international entrepreneurs have been co-opted and secularised in the digital age.
This event is an online zoom event which will take place 11:00 – 12:30 GMT and 16:00 – 17:30 PKT on Saturday the 26th March 2022.
This project is supported by Transforming Narratives and British Council and will be co-hosted by Ort Gallery, Birmingham England and Art Soch Gallery, Lahore Pakistan.
You can purchase tickets via eventbrite here.
About Hira Butt
Hira Butt is a British Pakistani artist based in Birmingham, England. Born in 1987, Butt migrated to England from Lahore, Pakistan, after completing her Bachelor in Fine Arts in December 2009. Since then, Butt has worked on and off in different creative fields. In 2016, Butt got the opportunity to study Fine Arts and relished the chance; she stretched herself as an artist and completed her master’s in 2018 by winning the Master Degree Prize in Medium Practice, Birmingham City University.
She has exhibited her work and undergone various residencies at multiple institutions including The Herbert Gallery (2019) and Ikon Gallery (2020-21). Through her installations, Butt’s work explores gender and cultural dominance and the ways in which colonialism has had a political, social, and psychological impact on South Asian diasporic communities. Drawing from her personal experiences, Butt also seeks to critique both the wedding day and the disillusionment which arises when the life envisioned and/or promised does not materialise. Butt’s work typically consists of using carefully selected mundane domestic objects, which she bejewels to transform give them a new identity; whilst maintaining their originality.
