All posts by maraahmedstudio

Released in collaboration with RoCo starting March 2021, The Warp & Weft is an online audio archive created and curated by interdisciplinary artist Mara Ahmed. It is a collection of stories from the first year of the pandemic that weaves together diverse voices, languages and geographies. Now a year later, with the coronavirus still with us and the world knit together as tightly as ever, we revisit the archive as a multimedia exhibition. Experience The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at RoCo (April 1-May 7) and immerse yourself in a colorful tapestry of stories.

Le 1er février 2021, tu as tiré ta révérence. Seul, en compagnie de ton vieux chat, Indy. Pour moi, plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant. J’ai la sensation qu’on m’a amputé d’une part de moi. C’est douloureux. Nous deux, c’est une histoire qui remonte loin. 65 ans d’amitié.

[My More-Than-Friend by Paul Couturiau: On February 1st, 2021, you bowed out. Alone, with your old cat, Indy. For me, nothing will ever be the same. It feels like a part of me has been amputated. It’s painful. The two of us, it’s a story that goes back a long time. 65 years of friendship.]

Listening to the reflections from The Warp & Weft has been rich and relatable. Stories of people’s shifts to a more introspective, slower and more connected existence, but also surrounded by grief, fear, racial unrest and confusion. Listening to Mara Ahmed’s moving “Connectedness” piece sparked something inside of me.

So I must confess, I am everything. I am the galaxy of galaxies. Agreed that philosophers have wrongly pointed out the errors of my theorem, that testimony is unscientific, that knowledge only arrives when two or more people can experience it. But I tell you, I am the universe.

I was moved by all the stories and by the rawness of people’s experiences along with their willingness to share. I couldn’t single out just one so, in the spirit of Mara’s work and her vision for this project, I wove them all together into this piece to create a tapestry of people, places, languages and realities because we are all many stories.

I have often wondered why traveling down an open road provides me with a certain freedom and healing seldom felt elsewhere. Though we may travel down the same highways, and drive past the same mile markers, the aging structures and familiar visited rest stops, each of us imprints our own impressions of a world based on our own experiences, leaving footprints of our own story in the landscape.

I was driving today listening to a random playlist when a song from ‘Les miserables’ began to play. I found myself overcome with emotion. While music often impacts me, it wasn’t that. See, when I was 20, my mom took me to see that live, in person, in a theater.

Over the last few months, I have allowed myself to pause a little and introspect, to understand my own mind. I guess the pandemic and a few major changes in my relationships have forced me to do so.