Afrah Shafiq’s (b.1989 lives and works in Goa, India) first solo show I Fell Asleep a Believer and Woke Up an Atheist revolves around the findings encountered by the artist during her extensive research (2020-2023) into the phenomenon of Illustrated Children’s books from the Soviet Union that were widely popular in India during the Cold War years, and culminated in a narrative video game Nobody Knows for Certain that was released in early 2023 to be shown internationally throughout the year in venues ranging from Dhaka Art Summit in February to Berlin’s HKW in September.
The show features NKFC and Soviet children’s books as the key visual and narrative sources, but opens a treasure trove of separate stories, starting with typewriter drawings that intuitively outline the links between the nonsense verse of Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) and Kazimir Malevich’s suprematism (1879-1935). Moving on to the series of small-scale red on white Slavic embroidery works and a mosaic piece that serves as a reflection on women’s tears as encountered in the fairy tales and folklore the show culminates with Shafiq’s newest quest game centred upon the female protagonist of a bride who cannot stop crying on her wedding day. These seemingly unrelated subjects are interwoven through the theme of political and private transformations which is essential to Shafiq’s current artistic practice.
– Text by Oxana Polyakova
The show features NKFC and Soviet children’s books as the key visual and narrative sources, but opens a treasure trove of separate stories, starting with typewriter drawings that intuitively outline the links between the nonsense verse of Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) and Kazimir Malevich’s suprematism (1879-1935). Moving on to the series of small-scale red on white Slavic embroidery works and a mosaic piece that serves as a reflection on women’s tears as encountered in the fairy tales and folklore the show culminates with Shafiq’s newest quest game centred upon the female protagonist of a bride who cannot stop crying on her wedding day. These seemingly unrelated subjects are interwoven through the theme of political and private transformations which is essential to Shafiq’s current artistic practice.
– Text by Oxana Polyakova
