Jubair
Encountering Roots
2021- Ongoing
This body of work explores the relationship between me and the house I spent my childhood years in. Exploring this bond has led to many realisations, one of which is how I view time. When I return home, time is both linear and static. Time is static when I go deep into the trenches of the vast land and immerse myself in the beauty of nature. Time is static when I sit my mother and grandmother down for a photograph. On the other hand, I am watching the Earth smile with flowers and drown everything during the monsoon. Time is linear now.
What feeling I once faced, one that of loneliness and isolation had changed due to months of being away from home and suddenly returning because of the global pandemic. This change was a curiosity that was insatiable. Photography enabled this newly-found feeling that led me to explore the relationship I had with my family and the environment around my house. Places and people whom I once didn’t dare to approach became my constant muse. This deepened my relationship with my home and it has created a strange sense of comfort.
2025- Ongoing
After seeing a theater artist perform in the play Tobuo Jage Uthi, I kept thinking over and over again: how can someone (a theater artist/someone I never imagined seeing in this way) break through their inner self or soul and reach such a state? The change for reality and the character is external, but what does the inner self go through in that process? How intense is the difference between the real character and the inner reality? As a result, what happens or continues? Does this dual position create a crisis, or does something else occur? That evening, was the performance of the play merely an implementation of the character? Or do all theater artists see themselves in some invisible character outside of the one they portray? Or is it that I've never seen it, so it feels like this? What kind of mental state do artists go through in the dilemma between their real personality and the character's personality?
