Recent Work
Oral History (of Us)
Audio installation, cassette tapes, tape player, and trash can, 6 minutes, 2022 - 2023
My mother speaks to me in Punjabi, but I respond in Urdu. I speak to my daughter in Urdu, but she responds in English. My mother and my daughter do not communicate verbally – just smiles, hugs and food. Over the course of just one generation, Punjabi is a lost language in my family. Now, Urdu, too, might be lost. This installation consists of an audio tape letter to my daughter covering centuries of our family history. After listening, the audience discards the tape in the trash.
Watch a 4-minute excerpt:
Anxieties of an Immigrant Father
Series of 5, charcoal and mixed media on paper, 2022
A series of charts that map my current and future anxieties about being an immigrant parent. Addressed to my daughter, the anxieties rise and fall based on my daughter’s age as I make assumptions about whether something will make me less or more anxious in the future.
22 Words
Video installation, 8 minutes, 2023
As a father teaches Urdu (national language of Pakistan) words to his daughter, what starts off like a language lesson intended for a 6-year-old, reveals something deeper, hinting at themes of cultural loss, immigrant life and the father's longing to belong.
Watch a 3-minute excerpt:
The Self-Help Library
Series of 50, custom-made hardbound books, 8” x 10” x 3” each, 2022 - 2024
A collection of 50, oddly specific self-help books that I wish had existed to help me become a better parent, man, citizen, worker and anything else needed to succeed as an immigrant trying to make home in the American Southwest.
The text on the inside pages of the Self-Help Library books starts off as if it was a conventional self-help book but then quickly veers into the surreal and evocative, as seen in the video below.
A crucial component of the Self-Help Library is community participation in being able to contribute their own oddly specific self-help book titles. These titles are then typed with a typewriter and look reminiscent of vintage library cards.
How to eat your cake and have it too
Video installation, 3 minutes, 2022
A father and daughter work together to make cake – a western dessert – but make the cake their own by using Pakistani flavors like cardamom, rose water, saffron and pistachios. Filmed to look like an instructional video, the cake making visuals are juxtaposed with audio instructions on how to successfully colonize a land to create a lasting and guilt-free legacy of oppression.
Concerned but Powerless
Series of 22, mixed media, charcoal and color pencil on Illustration board, 18” x 24” each, 2017 - 2023
I created this semi-satirical series as a way of processing my anxieties when I was in the final stretch of my two-decades long naturalization process and was also expecting to become a parent. Covering topics such as the election, parenthood, naturalization, and otherness, the sardonic commentary grew progressively desperate as anti-ethnic sentiments and tensions intensified after the unprecedented 2016 election. Accompanying the writings are collages with snippets of mid-20th century depictions of idyllic American families, Urdu words, and hand-drawn symbols that together tell a different story of the American dream.
The Number of the Day: 7,103
Charcoal on paper roll and the plastic American flag I received at my naturalization ceremony, audio and video, 156” x 36”, 2023 - 2024 (expected completion)
Using my own experience of going through a 19-year-long immigration process, The Number of the Day: 7,103 was developed as a learning tool to teach my daughter how to count. The tally marks represent the number of days I spent in the US immigration system before becoming a naturalized citizen. As my daughter counts to 7,103, we explore the meaning of time, being separated from family and what it means to wait for something you really want. Multimedia aspects of this project are in development.
Comfort Food
Typewritten recipe cards, wood recipe box, audio player and headphones, 7” x 5” x 5”, 2023 - ongoing
A collection of real and imaginary family recipes intended to bring comfort to my daughter. This is simultaneously an effort to standardize and transcribe actual recipes from my mother that would otherwise be lost, while also developing my own recipes for imaginary foods that my daughter might find useful someday when I am no longer around. Multimedia aspects of this project are in development.
Listen to Comfort Food audio installation (7 minutes):
If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out at hello@safwatsaleem.com