Adornment Becomes Land

Qinza Najm weaves a story about home and belonging in her latest solo presentation at. Chawkandi Art Gallery. Using geometric forms and topography she presents a surrealistic soliloquy on displacement through her visuals which act as emotional architecture through anchors and portals. Shaped by pressure- psychological, sociological and cultural, her topographies carry the emotionality of the vast life experiences and echoes of the collective consciousness of the diaspora. Pressure is at the heart of the story, leading to rupture, distension, compression and extraction. Nothing of value is gained without immense pressure, friction and fortitude. Najm’s images in this series feature two aspects: the bedrock of the land itself, and colliding with it, massive gem-like structures. Each represents contrasting subjects. The topographic forms function as the land that anchors us, weighty, somewhat fractured. These are the forceful territories and invisible borders; landscapes scarred by systems and controls, rewriting us and our stories as we touch them.