Kiara Amartya Mohamad
Keywords: World building, Post-colonialism, Longing
kiaram.hotglue.me, kiaramoth.art@gmail.com, instagram.com/l_o_k_o_i
There is a place that I seek.
I often wonder if I have been there before.
The wind there is loud, but not aggressive.
You can hear the tall grass swaying endlessly.
Perhaps that place has existed long before we have.
I'm interested in horses, chairs, objects, and memories from that distant place.
If I could, I would crawl and live alongside the objects I made.
My works are synonymous to the embodied experiences that encompass my daily life. Distant memories, feelings of yearning and longing become important characters and driving force in my artistic practice.
I've always struggled with affirming that there is space for me in this world-- So I built one.
I attempt to bring a piece of That Place to this physical reality.
That Place is where the horses and elephants roam freely, and where my racialized body can live alongside them, imagining possibilites of existing outside of the existing structures that are imposed upon us.
As a postcolonial body who has undergone Western (art) education, Intuition becomes an important compass in the artistic decisions that I make, for I believe that it is the only thing I have that has been left untouched from European modernity and colonial thought. I attempt to materialize, or make tangible for myself, ancestral stories and world building and yearning as possible ways of knowing and navigating oneself.
In "To Dwell in Horses (They have always been there)", I invite you to experience this world, and to immerse yourself in the various stories, drawings, characters, objects, intimate and obscured texts and narratives from that distant place.
This would not have been made possible without the generous helping hands of:
Jeremi Biziuk
Natsumi Sakai
Cecilie Fang Jensen
Romana Klementisová
Joana Almeida
Lakisha Apostel
Nina Ashley Bach
Gabriel Asa Zilberg
Paul van Blokland
Elvira Pereira