Artists: Hangama Amiri, Latifa Zafar Attaii, Zelikha Zohra Shoja
Translator: Ahmad Rashid Salim
gap gap gap / گپ گپ گپ brings together works by artists Hangama Amiri, Latifa Zafar Attaii, and Zelikha Zohra Shoja that are situated at the intersection of everyday photography and fiber art. The exhibition focuses on how each artist alters photographs of themselves, their families, or their communities through the slow, careful process of needlework.
The exhibition’s title pairs the Farsi word گپ, meaning “speech,” with its transliteration in the Latin alphabet, “gap.” gap gap gap / گپ گپ گپ signals how photographs speak to a viewer from the gap between the moment when it is taken and when it is later encountered. As part of the Afghan diaspora, Amiri, Attaii, and Shoja draw out the complexities of personally meaningful photos that have gained significance in the aftermath of displacement. The cycle of conflict churning in Afghanistan since the Soviet-Afghan War has jeopardized visual records, such as family photos, as well as inherited knowledge systems and practices, such as needlework. By bringing intimate photos into the public on the artists’ own terms, the works in this exhibition are embedded in the knotted threads of this recent history.
Transliteration is an act of conversion from one language system to another. The repetition in the title alludes to the repeated stitch the artists use to refigure photographs. Embroidering on the surface of a self-portrait, Attaii’s expressive stitches partially disrupt and conceal the subject. Sewing together pieces of fabric to recreate portraits of her parents, Amiri’s soft, large-scale textiles replace the sharpness of the image. Sewing together cropped family photos printed on sheets of fabric, Shoja’s soft sculptural photobooks anchor our attention to small moments, like hands embracing.
Their resulting works carry and communicate underlying personal sentiments, previously untold family stories, and communally informed intimate gestures. Together, through their interventions into images, the artists pull strands of a shared past that is indelibly marked by present and historical dislocations.
The exhibition is accompanied by interviews conducted by the curator with each artist exploring their artistic practices.
