Sophia Rehman

By placing, imagined scenarios within locations with familiar cultural markers I hope to situate the slightly nonsensical reactions that tend to flash across my mind as a PoC living in Britain within a more tangible discourse. The characters in the paintings live out fantasies which are potentially antisocial but too fantastical to be mistaken for stereotypes which British Asian people are actually stigmatised as doing.
The work prioritises a genuine representation of my cultural understanding of Pakistan (which as part of the third generation in the UK is limited). The references to paisley patterns, certain roads, plastic covered floral couches and the jungle book are interesting to me as they’ve become cultural references which I have latched onto. They are all examples of things which are heavily entwined with the South Asian diaspora but have managed to seamlessly slip into the wider cultural landscape of Britain. They stand out to me as something that I have the facilities to try and understand whilst simultaneously pointing to the absurdity of race and immigration related tensions in relation to South Asian communities.
The Union Jack and St Georges Cross lurk in the background of most of the paintings. They are used to contextualise the pieces, symbolising a constant awareness of the complex relationship with Britain which arises from colonial histories being innate to the social and cultural makeup of the country.
The process and choice of painting is a way to situate the work at the centre of art dialogues. They are oil paintings which do not look like oil paintings. Just as the semiotics of the work are my own subjective form of categorisation, the act of painting and employing a level of openness around the complexities of cultural literacy and disconnect (in relation to South Asia) works at odds with subjective, racialised expectations and categorisation of PoC artists.