Showcased at fortydivedownstairs and Unassigned Gallery.

MOTHER/FATHER TONGUE INSULTS is a textile piece celebrating language and cross-translation between both of my native tongues, Kūki ‘Airani Māori and Arabic.

Reaching at the roots of communication, I venture a few animals that are used as insults in both languages. With childlike, naïveté patterns and colour-ways, the insults provoke you through their own childish measures: intended as a cross-cultural study on how we begin name-calling in our familial circles. How do my identities play into one another? 

A meditation on the interposition of art-making and self-immaturity induced by the cultural language we choose to embrace, I ponder whether home starts with playfulness in word.

With choice to use fabric and threading, guidance from my mother’s working Pasifika hands, I am reminded of my roots and ancestral gifts.