Warda Ahmed, What Would I Rather, 2021
Visual artist, teacher, and illustrator Warda Ahmed is an artist that lives and works in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Ahmed is currently working on a project funded by the Kone Foundation. Ahmed makes comics about her family’s migration stories. Ahmed writes and draws the stories that she thinks need to be recorded: stories about migration, parallel realities, Afro-European identity, the stories that are her heritage. In 2019, the comic anthology Sisaret1918, to which Ahmed also contributed, won the Comic Finlandia award.
The starting points of this work were related to relaxation and finding one’s own space. The picture has direct and indirect hints from which you can deduce the soundtrack of the illustration.
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READIn this project, 100 letters were sent to the friends, relatives and acquaintances of the organizing team. The letter described how much we missed their hugs, which had been withheld for a year due to COVID. The addressees were asked to send us an item of clothing that was old, worn out, and had seen its last days in their closet.
An Equivalence of Our Distance
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READI did the work improvising it along the way during spring and summer 2021. The picture resembles a message or a notice board. There are small bits of drawing/painting/text done on a piece of paper that I had with me for some months in my backpack. I liked the idea that the image and the paper have aged - that the passing of time has left its marks on the work.
It is Only the End of the World
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READPerhaps what makes me who I am is not only the things I have now but also the things I have lost or I long for.
Places
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READI find the topic of artist residencies and friendships very personal and relevant for me as an artist. At any residence, time always seems to run out and eventually, people leave for different roads. The image hints at moments where activities have been interrupted: food is on the table, sketches and supplies are wide open, and the outdoor space flows into the interior.
Five timeframes, countless companionships