Hassaan Ashraf: Saadi Saqafat (Our Culture)

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Hassaan Ashraf, "I am the Servant," 2014

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Opening Friday, 6 April 2018 6-9 pm

Hassaan Ashraf is a multi-disciplinary artist who moved to Winnipeg in 2012 to pursue a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. Saadi Saqafat (Our Culture) is a series that reflects on his journey as a displaced artist, dealing with themes of cross-cultural experience, diaspora, homesickness, culture shock, global culture, post-colonialism, politics and the west’s discomfort with alien cultures. To express these ideas, Ashraf draws on his own experience as a Lahori who had never been a part of a diaspora, had never lived as a minority, and had never even been to a foreign country before coming to Winnipeg, Canada. His work reexamines everyday experiences he had during his life in Lahore, including customary modes of transportation, pastimes like kite flying, the Urdu language, and everyday life with the convenience of live-in servants. These practices, which were a part of a daily routine, ended when he came to Manitoba.

Ashraf: “My pursuit of a deeper understanding of the meeting of cultures began with my journey to Winnipeg. This was not only a physical transition from one place to another, but also a whole new beginning to my perspective on cultures. From ‘third world’ to ‘first world’, from majority to minority, from developing to developed, from being deprived of basic necessities of life like electricity to such an abundance of resources that one can’t help but take them for granted: I want to communicate this experience through my work. I’ve gone from not knowing the word ‘diaspora’ to belonging to one.”

PERFORMANCES: Opening Night - 6 April - PLUS Thursdays and Fridays during the exhibition, 1-3 PM. (April 12^th, 13^th, 19^th, 20^th, 27^th).

Special thanks to: The Canada Council for the Arts for funding.