Markings
2018
Mattatoio Rome

At Mattatoio in Rome, Amin invited Ana Rusiniuc and Sara Pagganwala to perform works he had imagined. For this venue, a former slaughterhouse, Amin’s moveable installation, 7, was divided into two joining rooms and redubbed 7.7. In the introductory space was Coal Carpet III, in which the seven fragments of Arabic that were the bedrock of the show lay embedded in a rectangular carpet of coal measuring 475 x 230 x 6 inches. For Marking 1/7, Ana, dressed in white, moved around the edges of the work, and picking up individual pieces of coal, marked herself until she was entirely smudged. In the adjoining room, an algorithm was projected onto a screen viewable from both sides, in which the same seven fragments of text appeared one by one: first as black elements against a white background, then as white against black. Driven by a computer program, these letters infinitely appeared in a random juxtaposition, accompanied by seven notes of a rubab, a wind instrument common to northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Suspended from the ceiling with fishing line were 77 depictions of the same fragmented text made from nickel-plated wire mesh. Dressed in her mother’s traditional South Asian wedding ensemble, Sara moved throughout this garden of letters, randomly approaching members of the audience for a work called Marking 3/7. Murmuring in Urdu, a language the Roman audience could not comprehend, she tenderly marked their palms with pieces of coal. This was an act reminiscent of a traditional mehendi ceremony, celebrated by Muslims and Hindus alike, in which intricate patterns in henna are applied to the bride and female members of her family. In this case, the “markings” Sara made were her own personal interpretations of the textual fragments that played all around her. Amin wanted both Ana and Sara to make 7.7 their own through these performative acts.