3. Abu Dha-me


            Cyanotype series, 2022Commissioned by Art Jameel via Farah Fawzi Ali for Jameel Arts Centre, as part of the Youth Takeover 2022 exhibition “smol”, “Abu Dha-me” is a fictional reconstruction of the city I grew up in as a means to reclaim it, based on four different neighborhoods I grew up around.
        I grew up around Hamdan, Electra, and Khalidiyah, in that order. I went to Khalifa A for school, in which I was (at one point) the only Filipino among 600 other boys. Through becoming the master cartographer and urban planner, I question existing power structures and hierarchies by perceiving them from a bird’s eye view, then renaming said neighborhoods and landmarks. It is not a rewriting of collective history, but the narration of a personal migrant history; a demand of my city being my home. 
        The installation at “smol” featured distorted field recordings from each area via a sound shower on loop, as well as chalk writing of my lived history in each area. Viewers were given freedom to interact and take up space via chalk.