Free/State
In the name
2015-22 | Tinted silicone, gambrel, chain, constructed space | dimensions variable
(Photograph by Saul Steed)
This work was first presented at Alaska Projects, Sydney in 2015. It was the first project that I delivered with Sebastian Goldspink and we have maintained a solid relationship since then. The work has been expanded to become a fully immersive experience, drawing on the performative nature of lighting and audience movement to create an alternative perspective on how shifts in global affairs are felt in the home.
I would sit with the yearlings, wiping snot from their nostrils and staring into their bulging yellow eyes, buried in the smell of wet wool. Facing death with a whispered prayer, those eyes glazed blue with a spasm of black shit and a spray of arterial red against the asbestos fence.
In the name invites you into the bright recesses of my childhood memories, when the scarcity of halal meat supplies brought animal slaughter and butchery into the suburban backyard. The pragmatic nature of life and death in the service of dinner became an unspoken ritual of home, a bloody expression of the sacrosanct enacted behind closed doors. This work embodies a sense of duality embedded within the Muslim Australian experience, an innate understanding that axioms of the home tend to falter at the front door.