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.
What if nothing doesn’t actually ever get ruined? Or at least not that bad. Maybe it just finished completely different than you thought.
READMitäpä jos (What if)
I am fascinated by memories from my childhood in the ’90s. I remember that there were posters around Finland back then (and later on), attached to various places by some religious groups. The posters said in bold capital letters “JESUS IS COMING ARE YOU READY” written in Finnish.
READVulnerability is coming
I 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.
READIt is Only the End of the World
Perhaps 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.
READPlaces
