Aisha Aslam

The Palimpsest

My practice explores migration as an ongoing process that leaves its mark on cities, bodies, and memory. Instead of viewing migration as a single moment of departure or arrival, I see it as an ongoing extension of political decisions and the layering of histories as well as identities that are continuously rewritten across generations. This perspective influences both my subject matter and my methods, which focus on tension and the fluidity of belonging.

In my installations, layering serves as both a metaphor and a technique, with images projected in front of each other, translucent fabrics merging and shifting, paintings communicating, and fragments of text collaged into a surface. By working across different media, I aim to create an embodied archive that defies linearity or finality. This simultaneously presents multiple narratives, highlighting displacement not only as a collective inheritance but as a condition continuously shaped by borders, colonial legacies, and state narratives, made visible in sites such as markets and advertisements, where belonging and unbelonging are negotiated daily.