From Protests to Pomegranates

This paper was written as a support for my thesis exhibition entitled From Protests to Pomegranates. The creation of this work is situated in a context of postcolonial diasporic life in Canada post-9/11. In this text I ruminate on origins, objects, and transformative possibilities. These objects, which consist of various fruits and drafting tools, all have ancestral ties. I engage in repetitive play with them, recalling memories along the way, in an effort to undo inclinations to belonging and to settle in diaspora, queerly. The three-day performative exhibition primarily consists of a series of large-scale photographs of playful hand gestures with these ancestral objects. The photographs are repeatedly wheat-pasted and torn off the walls. It also includes acrylic models of drafting stencils morphed after my grandfathers set of drafting tools, and conversations to be shared with gallery patrons over a bowl of freshly deseeded pomegranates