if i dream of flying

Artist's Statement (Elia Naqvi)

 

    I work in different materials and both two and three-dimensional media to create installation pieces and situations. Often I use sound in my installations that directly refers to my poems/rhymes to create a kind of visual poetry. It is important to me to create open-ended narratives that remind viewers of something in themselves, and to create esthetically enjoyable situations that also allow for ugliness and pain.

 

    My work is about remembering and fusing diverse narratives: my own story of being Austrian and Pakistani, of moving between cultures, of traveling between high and low, of going and staying, about the tension between the seemingly dull world of the everyday and the magic in it, and the ability of these things to be seen by us at the same time, all the time, everywhere. It is about holding two contradictory thoughts or ideas at the same time, and allowing them to exist simultaneously, without trying to explain either one away.