I started this project not knowing where to begin. And after nine months of intense research surrounding the sociology of modern day Britain I’m even more confused. I visited mosques, I interviewed people, I watched documentaries, I read books, and the more people I spoke to, the more I realised that this question can’t be solved by me. Or by any single person. The only way to solve this is dialogue; a continued discussion, and something for you to take away.
Through the story of three characters in a moment of surreal meeting, this installation encourages you to break down your misconceptions, to stop you from jumping to a conclusion. The baseline that connects everyone is that we’re all human. And the more I research the more the idea ‘nationality’ falls apart.
In a moment of surreal utopia three very different characters meet up to speak about their days and experiences, to rant about things that they’re dealing with, but they realise they’re all fairly similar, but also very different. But that’s ok. The living room the audience sits to watch the video in is an extension of this utopia, a kind of ‘joint’ shared living room between the three characters, living together but taking on bits of the others’ culture, displaying their memories and possessions in a museum like way.
Everything in the room is there for a reason. Poems by famous Pakistani poets about nationality, Pakistani textile design tile coasters recoloured in the union jack colours, ‘The son in the soil’ by James Collinson, a painting of a man questioning whether to stay in his own country in poverty or leave to a different country signalled by the poster behind him, where I recreated an NHS poster, (as my character is a pharmacist). Here I’ve used children's drawing with the sun arching round the head of 'Lily' referencing William Dyce’s painting of Christ as a working man. And reflected the body language of an Edwardian painting of a middle class British family in a photo.
There are scratch cards symbolising a reveal of character, I created scrumpled-up church leaflets to display how some members of the EDL parade under the ‘protection of christian values’ but don’t support the churches when they need it. Yoga and meditation leaflets due to the describing of meditation as the ‘spiritual religion of the middle classes’. And I tried to carry through a rose motif, hinting at a subtle English symbolism, included in edited photos, costume in the film, cushions, roses on the table, mugs, even my attire when presenting it as the practitioner to highlight how the imagined had become the reality.
