December 7, 2012

"Birds of No Nation" for the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial (@ QAGOMA)











These are shots of a large mural-sized canvas commissioned for the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia, which opens this weekend. It is a collaboration with Shamsia Hassani and the Propeller Group. Shamsia Hassani is the first and probably only serious female graffiti writer in Afghanistan, and is also an associate professor in the Fine Arts Department at Kabul University. I painted the central figure in the piece based on photos I took of her, using spraypaint and fatcaps, freehand as usual. Shamsia painted the surrounding designs and poetry with spraypaint and acrylic. It reads:

پرنده های بی وطن ،همه اسیرن مثل من ،صدای خواندن ندارن

Birds of no nation
Are all captive
Like me
With no voice for singing

We painted the piece in Saigon, Viet Nam, where The Propeller Group is based. They coordinated the entire project, and are behind a few previous collaborations together in Viet Nam and Singapore. This project is part of VNTWT, and they created this video documenting and discussing the process.

Many thanks to Tuan, Matt & Phunam of TPG & VNTWT, Shamsia, the good folks at San Art, QAGOMA, APT7 (and airport security in Kabul) for making this possible..this was a really special, inspiring project.
It will be on view from 8 December 2012 - 14 April 2013 at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane.


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