“Afriqaui Hasam” was the first Poetry Minute with spoken text, breaking the general rule of ‘unspoken poetry’. That being said, the entire minute is anchored in the act of writing and mark-making, and voice does not correlate with what is being written. The drawing of the line plays itself out as a determining of boundaries and identities.

Nava Derakhshani is a New York-based multimedia artist. A graduate of the International Center for Photography, she turned her lens onto herself exploring her identity through research, photography, video, and collage. Her other work includes varied expressions of self-portraiture and the nuances of her exploration into identity, migration, gender and belonging. There is an intrinsically political act in Nava’s place-making which is both feminist and decolonial.

‘I think of the history and meaning of text in my personal and geographic histories. Born to Iranian parents in Eswatini, I constantly grapple with my identity, placelessness, and legitimacy to be an African. Arabic text is examined as a transcultural anchor. A language brought to South Africa through slavery which became the first script to record Afrikaans. It was brought to Persia through colonial conquest and replaced the ancient Farsi script. Arabic text has a tremendous and nuanced history. It has been adapted into new traditions of art, calligraphy, poetry, and language. This piece invites us to look beyond a limiting idea of what it is to be an African. It invites us to claim our rich history of cultural diversity, exchange, and spirituality’ - Nava.

While entrancing, there is a devastating futility about the transience of Nava’s writing. Witnessing the meditation on what it is to write herself in water, into the water and into the sand. As a person of mixed identity, the questions are, ‘what is heritage in relation to language, skin, hair, and being? And how to find a sense of belonging in each context?

AFRIQUAI HASAM
Created by | Nava Derakhshani
Cinematography and Editing by | Nava Derakhshani

A Poetry Minute is curated by Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu