Malik Irtiza, Underbreath, 2021-Present

On-site installation and video. Materials: balloons, air, text, messages, letters, almond tree, and thread.

From the Artist:

The initial inspiration for Underbreath came from the act of dua, as I have experienced and seen many females around me exercise as a space of unimaginable longing and resilience. Fixing a post, pouring into a message and sending it out all became a lesson to me in nurturing hope. Parallel to this hope, though, runs a numbing sense of fatigue and uncertainty. The content of the project developed with the public engagement and reactions of Kashmiri participants who shared messages in forms of words, poems, songs, and pictures for the missing in the land of unreachable. The current form of installation envisions almond blossoms (balloons) as air-posts. Balloons are carriers of the dua whose destiny we cannot track or predict, hence the number forty becomes symbolic of the grieving, integral to the everyday work of hope.