"writing the unknown II"

Performance at KSU September 11, 2017.

writing the unknown

As of June 21, 2014, 686 human beings, including 318 alleged militant, 97children and 2 women have been named dead in 10 years of CIA drone strikes within Pakistan. Most of the drone strikes have occurred in the region of North Waziristan, Pakistan, which is about the size of the state of New Jersey. Elahi calls attention to this human loss and the on going conflict through the handwriting of all 686 names. What the viewer sees is a view from above, much like the view of a drone pilot, as the names layer one upon the other. It is a metaphor which speaks to a collective loss, and the blurriness of drone warfare and the distorted casualty count. The actual duration of this performance was equivalent to an American work day, approximately 8 hours and 24 minutes. The names of the dead have been collected from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Naming the Dead Project.

fair & lovely

Notions of nationalized beauty standards haunt and privilege women around the globe, shaping social relations and individual psyches. My video is inspired by popular advertisements in South Asia for the cream "Fari & Lovely," which depicts the character who uses the cream as the one who meets his or her soulmate, gets the job, lands the promotion. The female character in my video layers the cream carefully and obsessively, white-washed, consumed by a desire to transform into a more "desirable skin."