Subtitles Needed

Digital video with archival footage
New York, New York
January 2017

This film essay was one of my first projects and the starting point of exploring my identity through art. A sentiment that now feels overused and exhausted was, at the time, a brand new idea that opened an entire world for me. It became the catalyst for reconnecting with my native tongue and ultimately led me to move to Jordan to study Arabic three years later. The film was exhibited in 2016 apart of an NYU student’s screening of works from the MENA region.

The voice-over was intentionally left out. I had planned to speak in Arabic but didn’t yet have the ability, imagining I’d return one day to add it. Over the years, I’ve revisited the piece with thoughts of re-editing—rewording ideas I no longer hold, adjusting concepts that feel untrue, correcting captions that are out of place—but I’ve chosen to leave it untouched. It remains a still, honest archive of the moment it was made, when I was eager to understand this inner dissonance.