// A visual poem created through a global collaboration between artists in quarantine //

Poem “Inside Out Terrain” Written & Recited by Shay Khan

Cello Composition & Performance by Duygu Demir

Performance Art by Najah Rizvi

Archival Research, video Edit & Article words by Samia Zaidi

“Dude, I’m having trouble breathing.”

This was the text Shay sent me over WhatsApp in late March. We’d been speaking frequently since we’d first met in London last October but the frequency of our chats increased when I was suddenly unemployed in the midst of the pandemic-created vacuum. We both seemed to be watching the chaos unfold from similar places despite the 5400-mile distance between London and Los Angeles (that’s 8700 km for all you metric types).

Shay Khan is a genderqueer poet, musician, and actor who lives in Hackney with her two cats. In late March of 2020, the immunocompromised artist began showing symptoms of COVID-19. She described it to me as cyclical which I didn’t completely understand. The media was still making it sound as if it was like the flu at that point.

Two weeks later, I developed symptoms and suddenly, its cyclical-nature made more sense. It’s like LSD with a series of peaks and valleys. At times, you can barely feel it but suddenly there’s a sensation in the pit of your stomach as if you’re going up a roller coaster and reality begins to feel like a lost weekend again.

“These are the moments of racism that people chock up to one-off bad experiences, but most people of color know these moments too well”

Over the course of several weeks, Shay and I stayed in touch about one another’s symptoms. We exchanged advice and strategies, mostly home remedies from our respective mothers, and talked each other through some of our grimmest moments. Shay shared with me that she waited four hours for an ambulance one night when she found herself experiencing severe chest pain. After calling several times to no avail, a friend called on her behalf. An ambulance showed up in front of her flat in twenty minutes. Dispatch even called to stay on the phone with her in case she might be scared. The only difference between her calling and her friend calling is that Shay’s given name sounds Muslim. These are the moments of racism that people chock up to one-off bad experiences, but most people of color know these moments too well to be immune to the cruelty and gas-lighting that denies their lived experience and carefully evolved intuition when faced with these undercurrents. Navigating the bureaucracy and the bias of these systems with too much melanin in your postal code or an alien name is a special kind of hell. Add a variation to your sexual identity for a little additional fuckery.

“At the worst of my symptoms, I sometimes laid there thinking I might just die right now… I realized that this poem can’t die with me”

In our daily chats, Shay and I frequently found ourselves discussing the vulnerability the pandemic had created around these systems we’re discouraged from challenging and the hopelessness we felt healing for a world we were rapidly losing faith in.

Before the lockdowns began, Shay had just performed her poem “Inside Out Terrain” for a digital event by an art collective based in Lahore. “At the worst of my symptoms, I sometimes laid there thinking I might just die right now,” Shay explained. “My breathing was so bad at points, silently slipping away felt so reachable. That’s when I realized that this poem can’t die with me.” Over the course of a couple of days, Shay oscillated back and forth between her bed and her desk and managed to record a recitation of it. She began sending it to a few friends to see if they’d be interested in responding through their respective crafts.

The first of her friends was Duygu Demir, a cellist and long-time collaborator based in Istanbul. Upon receiving the poem, Duygu immediately connected to the traveling themes in Shay’s words and went digging for a composition she’d started writing years before called “Indifference”. The central theme for this piece was that people, though familiar with the idea of inequality, never act against it. She finished the piece with the poem in mind, recorded it on her phone, and sent it to Shay.

“It’s not hard to feel cynical or let down, yet, somehow, we keep going.”

Next was Najah Rizvi, a performance artist based in Amman, Jordan who contributed a recording of her performing one of the most iconic acts of self-care in South Asian culture: putting oil in your hair and braiding it. She mentioned that she’s graduating art school this year and that it feels surreal among the current circumstances as did collaborating remotely with several artists based so far away from her. Najah shared that the poem made it so “[she] kept having visions of ancestral rituals and felt that the most appropriate response was this encounter to an intimate scene, which for someone, at some point, in some time, was the beginning of every single day.”

Finally, all of these pieces fell into my lap in Los Angeles, CA. Shay and I frequently discuss British colonialism in South Asia given our respective places deep within South Asian diaspora. Archival research seemed like a natural step to complement the nostalgic piece. I dove into public domain archives and discovered motion pictures and newsreels filmed predominantly by the British military documenting the occupation of South Asia. Capitalist propaganda pieces and a handful of other motion pieces also found in the public domain were included in the final cut as well.

So here we were, all in our respective homes several worlds apart, being forced to reflect on our places within these broken systems with fresh mass graves and more news about disproportionate numbers of black and brown people dying to supplement the usual headlines of black and brown people dying. It’s not hard to feel cynical or let down, yet, somehow, we keep going.

“here we were, all in our respective homes several worlds apart, being forced to reflect on our places within these broken systems…”

“What prospects do we really have in a world like this?” Shay exclaimed when reflecting on the final cut. “The closing line in the poem is really about the determination of sorting through this lasagna of trauma.”

“Dude what is a ‘lasagna of trauma’? I can’t say that.”

“But people will understand it! Everyone knows that a lasagna is an organized mess. Layer upon layer, ancestral trauma, COVID going on right now, there’s so much.”

She had a point. For me, there was something therapeutic about going through all of this footage that felt forgotten and discarded. The scenes and activities featured in them are some that I’d only ever heard about from my family. A lot of diaspora kids including myself have been given these oral histories of how our ancestors navigated colonial rule and what their lives were like before the partition and we’re the ones having to write them down because erasure isn’t too distant of a reality if we’re not too careful. Connecting these images to these words felt like ancestral shadow work and suddenly, this history that usually feels so far away seemed so much closer and my origin story of how I landed at this very desk typing these very words began to make more sense. 

Here's to more determination to continue sorting through this lasagna of trauma.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Shay // @shaykhanartist

Shay Khan is a British artist who is inspired by her Eastern nomadic roots and a lineage of esteemed poets, with influences embracing luminaries. She has performed extensively across Europe and was personally invited by American folk artist Ani DiFranco as main support on her European tour.

Samia // @samiahzaidi

Samia Zaidi is a queer South Asian-American writer/director born and raised in the East Bay Area, California. She currently resides in Los Angeles. After cutting her teeth in filmmaking while finishing her Anthropology degree at UCLA, she started Pitch, Please, a design and consulting firm for directors' treatments, moodboards, and pitch decks for motion content, still photography, and experiential design. Pitch, Please serves an array of indie and celebrity directors and photographers across diverse industries. As a filmmaker, she gravitates towards edgy comedy, documentary, gratuitous art films, and music videos. When she's not designing pitch decks or on set, you can usually find her in a dance class or impulse buying bulk herbs. Feel free to contact her for questionable advice about yoga or motorcycles.

Duygu // @duygudemirmusic

Duygu Demir is a classically trained composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Istanbul. She began studying music and ballet as a child, and after completing her classical studies she changed her path to early music, electro-acoustic music and improvised music. She has performed at festivals and concerts with contemporary dancers, free music improvisers, world musicians and performed on a number of studio albums by renowned musicians.

Najah // @najahrizvi

Najah Rizvi is a Pakistani artist who has lived in the Middle East and is currently studying Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. In London and Amman, she has worked with galleries and artists in a variety of collaborative projects. Her art practice is largely informed by her experience as a Muslim Pakistani diaspora artist of colour. Najah works in multiple disciplines including painting, installation and performance.