NAIMO OMAR
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Naimo Omar’s practice centres around a constant dissection of the different factors that comprise her identity (Black, Muslim, fat, cis woman, child of Somali diasporic parents) and how they intersect/interact with each other — how it exists in both private and public spheres as well as the relativity of public and private when contextualised in a multitude of spaces and situations. It simultaneously functions as an active critique on viewers and their intrinsic perspectives as well as an essential reflective process facilitating healing and emotional resolution. Through the intersection of painting, moving image, text and found object installation, she seeks to explore the precarious nature of existing societal structures around bodies and interrogate the various experiences of minority peoples in these spaces. Her first solo show, Who will remember the rain?, is an experimental installation exploring damaged memorabilia and the stories that may be traced through their remains, linking the past and the present through the act of rest and reflection.
WHO WILL REMEMBER THE RAIN?
The function of rain in meteorology is essentially understood as a hydration system for the earth. It also holds the ethos of recycling and reusing in its core. The rain ruined my mum's family photos. They’re irreplaceable. I preserve them the only way I know how. They sit here in the body of their reckoning for cleansing, in crystal bowls that twinkle with its ringy contortions, set upon wooden bed slats. Among the bursts of magenta and cyan and yellow, around the glistening teeth of a laughing mouth, you tell them they’re pretty and they’re beautiful and you’ve seen nothing like them. You tell them you see the story in them, that staged shuffling of feet, that splayed leg with toes twitching inside its running shoe encasement. That ache in mums back as she sits upright, face pensive and glossy. You tell them you are blessed to have gazed upon their remains. You tell them they deserve their sleep after such a long day in the rain, washed of their blessings and their sins, soaked into a frozen image that you stand over now. I appreciate your beauty, says you, eyes glassy or vacant or confused, even if the rain has swept you away. I’ll remember it.
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