Subtitles Needed

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

Exhibited at The Muslim Protagonist Showcase, NYC, NY on March 31st, 2017

This film essay was one of my earliest projects expressing my explorations of identity through art. Although it’s a sentiment that now feels overused and exhausted, it’s creation was  detrimental in the development of not only my art, but my understanding of self.  It became the catalyst for reconnecting with my cultural roots, and native tongue, ultimately leading me to move to Jordan to study Arabic only two years later. 

The voice-over was intentionally left out as 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 the ideas that 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 at the ages of 20-22 years old.