Niga Sayyed

As an artist my professional life is a continues narrative of confronting and embracing a series of challenges that have brought me face to face with moments of extraordinary revelations. My work is a social commentary on the dimensions of relocation and the mounting identity crisis of today’s human beings. As things stand now, is difficult to define where we are from – our identities are the product of complex family trees and migrant ancestors as well as our own personal trajectories. This project deals with the social issues such as identity, geography and the circumstances of a global citizen in todays globalized world. In my visuals, I am up to what it takes to hold a daring demonstration or a silent protest against the human-imposed identities on the basis of boundaries, race and color. When I draw the maps of the city with my thumb impression I actually mark the territory I called home. The term ‘homeland’ is not associated with just the city or region we are living in, to me being a global citizen, it symbolizes the broader world. The restrictive use of colors in my work also unifies the maps of different countries I lived in the past and enforces the ‘oneness’. Today I dream a utopia world where people can travel and live freely and without the fear of hate and racism

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This project include the process-oriented boldly gestural canvases of today’s distorted realities. Mostly i used screen-printing technique in this project. Being a true lover of calligraphy and a native Urdu speaker, i used Urdu alphabets to construct my visuals. Because I take myself as a global citizen with the blend of my local identity, it was a perfect way to raise a global issue of relocation with the essence of my own identity. My visuals consist of maps of those countries where I lived in the past. All those places made me feel like home. The layers in my work show our life has layers of memories in our mind and soul. All of my visuals are constructed on my thumb impressions, which represent my identity. 

The purpose of using transparent sheets of PVC in most of this project is to create a multi layered visual. I used black as a high contrast color to print on the first layer and I opted a very light tone of grey for the layer beneath. I have twelve visuals in screen- printing. Their sizes vary from 140 x 110 cm to 70 x 50 cm. For this project as a part of traditional printmaking technique, I also experimented hydro printing technique on three-dimensional objects. 

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