The genesis of Collecting Earth can be traced back to a personal realization about how little space I have consumed. What began as a simple epiphany has since evolved into full-blown research taking on a multitude of forms and exploring a wide range of topics such as the concept of expanded identity, the colonized body, wilderness and wilding, somatic healing practices, archive and memory.
This project will be presented as both a film and a publication. This initiative has inspired my PhD research, where I am actively working on developing innovative re-wilding pedagogies that can help create new sustainable imaginaries.
Performance Shame
Shame has always come before me in every interaction and every situation.I asked my shame out on a date to befriend it. Accept it and understand it like a lover. I don't know when it became bigger than me. I am finally able to see it as a separate entity. Separate from me.
This performance is part of a series titled "Reconciliation". The series is inspired by my journey of acceptance, acknowledgement and forgiveness for the parts of myself that I've been scared to face.
Performance/Presentation for the Sentient Performativities 26-30 June, 2022 Dartington, UK.
https://performativities.info/
The performance walks its viewers through the process of becoming that involves devising new choreographies of empathy and love through dialogue and playful interventions.This performance is part of Hirezh's presentation at the symposium.
Hirezh is an art collective that encourages new ways of interacting with the spaces and places.
AlmResidency#6 Exhibition at Super+Centercourt, Munich 2022.
http://www.centercourt.gallery/0222almresidency-meets-supercentercourt
Collecting earth is a video performance/film and installation. The project is a continuity of taking up space, finding my own flow and wave to dance through life and tapping into my expanded identity beyond the body, geography and human. An identity that is de-colonized, free flowing, unapologetic for its expansion and growth like wild forests and rivers.
As Much Earth As You Want is an installation with mirrors and postcards in the forest. Pictures on the postcards are a residue of my presence at the hut during Almresidency. The postcards contain instructions for people to make new work by interacting with the mirrors and the site and post it on #asmuchearthasyouwant
The text on the postcard translates:
This postcard is part of an art project
by Sobia Zaidi during and for
AlmResidency 2021. It brings attention to inner and outer spaces within you and in the world around you. It needs you to take a picture of you interacting
with the mirror and the site at the same time. Send this picture on #AsMuchEarthAsYouWant
Feel free to send this postcard to your loved ones.
AlmResidency 2021, Munich. During the residency, I explored the questions around site and non-site while trying to lovingly co-exist with the hut in the mountains that was its own "Being" both of us constantly evolving and negotiating our presence, teaching each other new choreographies and challenging each other to learn new ways of being. I woke up every day, gathered wood, made fire, cooked breakfast, sat by the fire, read by the fire, gazed at the stars, danced in the snow to keep myself warm, showered under the blue sky facing the mountains.
I can still smell the hut that mostly smelled like fire, my perfume, snow and coffee.
The images are a residue of my presence at the hut.
Walking in love is a project started in France during a residency, involving walking together. I ask people to take me to the places that are sacred or special to them so walking together almost becomes an act of pilgrimage. The project will develop new choreographies of faith and trust. Documentation and reflections will be published as a chapter in the workbook/playbook on love studies.
Talk about social practice and my position as an artist with Poesis.Socialart a podcast dedicated to the research.
https://soundcloud.com/user-384729018/episode-5-with-sobia-zaidi
'Art and Social Engagement' an interview about my practice and socially engaged art. The focus of the talk was the new course that I designed for FCCU titled 'The Social Turn: Art and Social Practice'. This course is designed as a collaborative social intervention in itself. The course is being offered in Spring 2022 and is listed on GLAA. The talk was a part of SSP-D webinar series. You can listen to it here:
https://web.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=248366262904524&ref=watch_permalink
Curated "While at Home" 2020 an online performance art show.
We are home for one and one reason only. Individual but together experiencing the new circumstances, trying to create fictional routines, kill time, live with ourselves in the same place, waking up alone in the same beds, staring at the same walls, eating at the same table with the same people, existing in the same physical space that we call HOME. The sameness, monotony and un-eventfulness has forced artists to re-discover and re-invent that very same space. By interacting with it in the new ways finding little nuances of un-sameness everyday to keep going, keep exploring. While at Home is the curation of such interactions, engagements and disengagements. A testimony of our existence in the space that we call Home creating subtle events in our 'eventless' routines.
While at Home is the final showcase of the first batch of Performance Art Course students at Forman Christian College.
Under slung-ed a performance art show curated after the end of performance art course taught at the National College of Art. The show was designed to define and redefine performance art by experimenting in and through various styles and discourses of performance.
Connection Manual is a DIY manual that contains a set of instructions for anyone to create performances. The performances were designed to provide people a chance to connect (mostly bodily) and how with the visible and invisible connections of the
