BUA Institution

Humboldt Universität

Description of Research

My research focuses on transversal affinities across Afro-Asian diasporas, with a particular interest in makeshift forms, archival glitches and expanded kinships in art, poetry and music videos. I am currently exploring the afterlives of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Angst essen Seele auf in the works of Ming Wong and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Where in the world has your career been largely based until now?

İstanbul/Singapore

Why Berlin?

Berlin, like İstanbul and Singapore, is a city situated between “East” and “West,” albeit in myriad and differentiated ways. I first visited Berlin when I was 16 years old, thanks to an opportunity to represent Singapore as a youth ambassador for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games. Since then, I have haphazardly gravitated towards the city’s potential for being a space where palimpsestic layers of sounds, languages, temporalities, and perspectives meet.

What fascinates you about your research area?

I am drawn to the challenge of working in emerging fields that have yet to define their vocabulary. This plasticity enables me to think in undisciplined ways, code-switch, and bend the grammars of Western and Eurocentric epistemes. I enjoy thinking with and alongside a constellation of black feminist and queer theories, and fostering transdisciplinary insights through collaborative research.

How did you become interested in your specific topic?

While working at National Gallery Singapore, I watched a BBC documentary, Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain’s Hidden Art History (2018). Artist Sonia Boyce and team dug into the archives to bring together works by artists of African and Asian descent, such as Lubaina Himid and Rasheed Araeen, unveiling their undisplayed works and oft-untold stories. Profound, and moving.

What is your preferred way to communicate your research to the broader public or other specific sectors beyond academia? Where can we see, hear or read you next?

Lately, I have been interested in radio as a mode of transmitting diasporic knowledges across oceans. I co-host Mutfak with Anna Frehiwot Maconi on Oroko Radio. Perhaps this interest inadvertently emerged as a consequence of paying radio tax!

What did you want to be when you grow up?

A radiologist.