Unum Babar
MFA ’13 SIM
As a recent Pakistani immigrant to the US, married to an American citizen and raising a young child in the current climate, language is a large part of my identity struggle . Grappling with the concept of “second language” and “mother tongue”- the language of speaking vs. that of dreaming, what I grew up speaking vs. what my child will. In an attempt to teach her Urdu, my mother tongue, I brought the textbook I grew up with, a “Qaida”. Two panels of this work document the first and last page of this book in a language read from right to left, the last page with the Pakistani national anthem printed on it. They flank a central panel documenting my child spelling the word LAND in American Sign Language she learnt in pre-school in the US, moving from left to right. Mounted on placemats I have eaten hundreds of meals on in Pakistan, the work carries the history of my native food, on ode to our dinnertime conversations.
This piece explores my efforts to reconcile incongruent parts seamlessly into a new identity which is neither here nor there, neither assimilated nor completely detached from my present. The quintessentially American song “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land” speaks to me in an absolutely idealistic rendering of immigration as the promise of a new, bright future, something that has been lost in the world of today – where borders, visas and language protect the “land” fiercely from the other.
Unum Babar (SIM ‘13) received a BFA and Art Education diploma from Lahore, Pakistan. At MassArt, she was a Fulbright scholar and featured by the Boston Globe as one of Boston’s rising young artists. Since then, she has worked as Assistant Professor and exhibited solo and collaborative projects internationally. Unum recently relocated to Florida and continues her teaching at Daytona State College, as well as her studio practice currently exploring alternative photographic techniques.
