Farihah Aliyah Shah

This is an ongoing series exploring the strength and validity of memory and oral history as alternative forms of research. My family is from Guyana, South America and like most postcolonial people, it is difficult for me to trace my exact lineage. The absence of documentation about my maternal grandmother adds to the increasing void I feel in my own identity.

Guyana’s history and complex identity is a direct reflection of my own complex mixed-race sense of identity and belonging. This series incorporates a combination of images from my family archive, recent photographs of my grandmother’s various homes (in North and South America), text and framed material with a small needlepoint intervention that speak to Guyana’s rivers and a soundscape to recreate my grandmother’s archive. It’s about the act of reclaiming agency of my personal narrative.

Part of the traveling group exhibition Don't Ask Me Where I'm From in collaboration with the Imago Mundi Foundation in Treviso, Italy and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The exhibition is heading to the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida, USA.