Zaman, Rehana
Rehana Zaman’s moving image and performance practice attunes viewers to the intimacies and overlaps in lived experience. She considers the layered social dynamics at play in individual lives, and how these lives intersect with others’, often along racial, socio-economic and gendered axes. Zaman’s work is rich in textual references while also drawing from personal exchanges in public and domestic spaces.
Tell me the story Of all these things, 2017 is an accumulation of several narrative threads, which captures the fragmentation, hybridity and dislocation inherent in diasporic storytelling. The work takes its title from Korean-American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, a book that brings together thoughts, drawings and notes about Cha’s family history of migration to the United States. Its textured style and contrasting imagery is reflected in Zaman’s film, and is used to communicate experiences of British Muslim women with nuance and complexity. Candid conversation between Zaman and her two sisters is punctuated with screenshots of the UK government’s anti-terrorism e-Learning site ‘Prevent’ and ominous animated visions of a metamorphosing body in a desert-like landscape – a body caught between terror and desire. Throughout the film, Zaman pays close attention to the motion of hands while preparing food. Known but unspoken histories remain embedded in these gestures.
- Artwork Details: running time: 22 minutes 47seconds
- Edition: 1 of 3
- Material description: 3 part HD video, stereo sound
- Credit line: © the artist
- Theme:
- Medium: Film and Audio Visual
- Accession number: ACC34/2018