This is Just to Say
Ayesha Bashir, (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist studying moving images at Bennington College. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan. She comes from a conventional background where she wasn’t allowed to study the arts. Her artistic practice started in her senior year of high school in the US, and it quickly became a means for survival. Her work is driven by slow cinema, still-life paintings, and experimental stop-motion animations. She is currently a curatorial and learning intern at Dia Art Foundation in New York.
Her paintings reconstruct memory through cultural memorabilia and explore the role of objects in fostering nostalgia. Her moving image works investigate racial melancholy, displacement, and amnesia. Her practice is engaged in the documentation of materiality and sentimentality explored in multiple mediums.
This piece showcases the ritual of fruit cutting as an expression of apology, appreciation, and adolescence; a love language of sorts within different Asian cultures. The visuals follow a familial voice-over between my parents as they discuss their collective love of mangoes.
Dedicated as a love letter to her parents and William Carlos Williams.