Chelsea Summer Show
Chelsea College of Arts
London, 2018
The above images are from the 2019 postgraduate degree show at Chelsea College of Arts. The installation utilised a cumulative body of photographs of myself, dressed up in costumes which are inspired by ‘unreasonably masculine’ men featured in film and literature.
The silk curtains, 1980s fan and the cardamom macaroons briefly touch back to domestic and feminine realms of upper-middle class neighbourhoods in South Asian cities
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environments which I am very familiar with. Over a series of weeks, I was dressing up and putting together outfits, rented from costume warehouses which would store clothes and accessories made for plays staged across London’s theatres.
By playing this game of casual cosplay, I attempted to wear the role of larger than life hetrosexual male characters such as 007, Indiana Jones and a Royal Admiral. The photographs looked into the illusions behind power, mobility and sexuality which are embodied by both fictional and real men that are portrayed repeatedly in popular culture. In choosing recognisable backdrops such as MI5 building, The British Museum and Victoria Park, the compositions aimed to look at the deception of tourism and how London is presented as canonical in terms of history, art and films.
I became interested in costume and its role in make-belief during my year in London as an art because of how London is sold as a city of immense cultural wealth. It is only once you live there and experience the pendulum of power that demonstrates how manipulative storytelling can be. As an international art student from Pakistan living in the UK, one would expect to find so much more opportunity the land of drinkable tap power, no power outages and student loans. Pakistan is primarily a classist country and money will see you past any restriction or law. However, during my time in England I found my new home to be quite the facade —if you didn’t own the right type of passport and if you weren’t the required ethnicity, your chances of success were minimal. I suppose this work embodied a time when I was wrestling with versions of myself; the well spoken, grateful and ambitious student desperate to make it and the privileged daughter who knew everyone there is to know. The disparity between my ‘home-self’ and my ‘temporary migrant-self’ were clearly on opposite ends of the scale.
Digital prints on polyester hung on brass curtain rods, 118.11 x 56.3 inches