My project '1050 frames' explores how can we tell stories through objects. In doing so, I focus on my family histories of migration and movement, to question traditional archiving methods versus non linear, fragmented and personal narratives.
Migration was made easier during the 1950’s as Pakistan was a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Employers invited Pakistanis to fill labour shortages which arose in Britain after the Second World War. As Commonwealth citizens, they were eligible for most British civic rights. The British National Act of 1948, for example, gave British citizenship to anyone who lived in the British Empire and Commonwealth at that point. In the post-war period, many Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis were also UK citizens and fully entitled to travel to the UK. Post-war immigration policies were fairly open to fill the labour shortages and the creation of the NHS resulted in a need for skilled medical staff and transport workers who were needed to run public transport and the textile mills of the North. My Grandfather was one of these immigrants who came to study at the University of Manchester, through a Scholarship given by the Pakistani government in 1959.
His histories and objects travelled back and forth across lands, oceans, and borders but naturally these stories and histories got lost over time and even forgotten. Cultural identities became mixed and were given new narratives. I began to think how I could make my heritage more tangible and seen. Rather than digging solely into the histories of my family, how could I dig into the physical objects of heritage and migration and explore what’s left of these memories. With a lack of stories and people and a detachment from the country of Pakistan itself, visual associations have become my way of seeing. However, without knowing where these objects are from or why my family chose to keep them, their meaning is altered and it doesn’t hold the same significance.
For my work, I made a film which compiles the information and stories of my family through a collection of personal objects, state documents and conversations with my family. Following on from this, the film is transformed into a spatial installation, wherein still frames are extracted and displayed as images scattered in the space. An act of repair is held within the frames of the film themselves, indicating my way of engaging with the subject as well as the complexity of archiving intangible cultural heritage.
