Kate Busby & Fozia Khaliq

Kate Busby

Kate is working in partnership with London-based artist and creator Fozia Khaliq on a project that considers heritage and the construction of identity. The project can be divided into two parts.

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Part One

The idea begins in a launderette at 5am, the only place I have even been detained in London, forced to think without a book in my hand or awake people to call me on the phone. Curator/artist Fozia Khaliq and I are to meet at the launderette at some quiet pocket of the morning to wash sheets together in the silence, in the emptiness of the most neglected part of the day. The communal act of washing reminds Fozia of her mother, congregating with the other mothers in the neighbourhood for the weekend washp. For me, the identical washers all lined up in a row makes me dream of portals to another world, or watery wombs where babies of ideas can made.

We will meet at the laundrette at a godforsaken hour with a white linen sheet each from our personal collection and spend time at the launderette writing out the story of our lives so far in tiny, black marker letters on these billowing sheets. Fozia might decide to cut things out or stitch things to the sheet in order to map the story of her life, but writing is what I’m choosing. We will document this “mapping” in photos taken in quick succession to create a long sequence of photography that is used to not only document fragments but an entire “complete” chunk of a moment. When the stories are written, we will wash them. Some letters will run, some will fade, some might disappear entirely.

Fozia Khaliq

Part Two

The sheets will be used as part of an installation. We will build a small wooden hut in my studio, which we will cover with the sheets. Inside the dark space, a recording of the sounds of a busy London street can be heard. Also inside the space, almost hidden, there will be an automatic perfume spray like the ones found in the toilets of expensive hotels, timed to spray a puff of perfume every ten minutes. In the dark to the sounds of London, the audience will suddenly smell a puff of perfume. The scent shall be very specific. Either the Arabian oud that so reminds me of my father passing by me invisibly but for his scent, or a pine scent that Fozia believes her father wore on his visits to see her and her five siblings.

Kate Busby

www.katebusby.carbonmade.com/about

Fozia Khaliq

www.fivestoreyprojects.com
http://www.v42.eu/

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