Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui – …Now! (Can I stay at your place?)

Opening: Tuesday, May 6, 18:30

Depo presents Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui’s solo exhibition …Now! (Can I stay at your place?) between May 6 – July 12.

…Now! (Can I stay at your place?) centres on the intricacies of time and displacement, as well as the role of hope amidst the recurrent discontinuities of the two. Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui’s exhibition, which he also terms an essay of sorts, is premised on the pursuit for an authentic encounter with its visitors.

Does the fear of displacement only concern space, or does it also imply a problem of scale? How does this fear affect the lived experiences of those who are not-at-home? Consisting mainly of sound recordings, texts and drawings, Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui’s exhibition tackles Walter Benjamin’s “now-time” (Jetztzeit) by drawing primarily from the artist’s personal history. In this essay, Siddiqui treats displacement not only as a spatial but also as a temporal interruption, while exploring the notion of “disappointed hope”, which he sees as a source of resilience in the face of uncertainty, in various mediums and scales.

Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui was born in Lahore and lives in Istanbul. His research interests include displacement, spatial storytelling and autobiographical methodologies as they relate to borders. Siddiqui is also one of the programmers of Hüsnükabul, an Apaçık Radyo programme that explores concepts such as permanence and transience, inclusion and exclusion, public and private, guest and host from a refugee-centric perspective.

*Image: Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui, Aile Arşivi, Dada (دادا ) Rahmatullah Khan, Şalimar Bahçesi / Family Archive, Dada (دادا ) Rahmatullah Khan, Shalimar Garden, 1953.