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SUMMARY:Vernissage - Inviting In - Azka Ahmed
DESCRIPTION:Come by the Ottawa Trans Library this August to see our second art show of the year\, featuring artist Azka Ahmed and their stunning work!  \n\n\n \nArtist Statement\n\n					Inviting In is a living portrait archive celebrating gender-diverse Black\, Indigenous\, and People of Color in cultural attire that affirms the fullness of our identities. This work arises from a need to see our multiplicity represented\, and from a refusal to disappear or be captured through the gaze of extraction. \nI began this project searching for reflections I rarely encountered growing up: queer and trans people who looked like me\, carried their cultures with them\, and did not have to choose between ancestry\, faith\, gender\, sexuality\, or survival. As a queer and trans Pakistani artist from a religious background\, I deeply understand what it means to inherit stories that insist parts of ourselves cannot belong together. This portrait series is a refusal of those stories and a reclamation of our sovereignty. \nCentering Black\, Indigenous and People of Color\, each portrait is made in collaboration through a facilitated self-portraiture process. Participants invite us to see them how they wish to be photographed\, choosing their adornments\, cultural clothing\, inherited objects\, and what parts of themselves they want the world to see. The process becomes an invitation into trust and self-authorship. \nInviting In is an invitation to practice more expansive ways of seeing each other- through invitation\, reciprocity\, and curiosity. \n \nArtist Bio\n\n					Azka Ahmed (they/them) is a queer\, transmasculine multidisciplinary artist and community-based researcher from Pakistan based on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg. Across evocative mediums\, performance\, installation\, and participatory arts practices\, they explore the complexities of navigating migration\, gender\, belonging\, and intimacy. Azka’s work centers queer and transgender Black\, Indigenous\, and People of Color\, collaboratively cultivating intimate sanctuaries to challenge systemic erasure and return home to ourselves. \nAlongside their artistic practice\, Azka works in gender-affirming healthcare and sexual health education\, contributes to community-based research\, and facilitates arts-based gatherings for healing\, storytelling\, and collective liberation. Their poetry has been published by the Canadian Poetry Institute\, their work has been presented nationally\, and portraits from their ongoing project Inviting In have been archived by The ArQuives.\n 
URL:https://ottawatranslibrary.ca/event/vernissage-inviting-in-azka-ahmed/
LOCATION:Ottawa Trans Library\, 1104 Somerset St. West\, Ottawa\, ON\, K1Y 3C8\, Canada
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