Linings In My Head
Sharmeen/Sifar
This work is a collection of 38 headlines. The headlines are sourced from archived copies of the main newspaper in Singapore, spanning from 1981 to 2009.
Sharmeen turned 38 in 2019. The 38 years selected for this project reflect the amount of time Sharmeen went through reading headlines such as those presented.
Using the keywords ‘Indian’ to search via state-run site newspaper.sg, she chose 10 headlines from each year, and presented the ones that resonated with her for the digital print.
Her research gathered almost 400 headlines.
— —
Words that stilted growth; grows, into a soothing ASMR-like meditation. Swayed to the false rhetoric of stereotypical genetic dispositions of ethnicities. Which still informs the policy-making of the State's current institutions. The work is no longer a collection, like what the artist set it out to be. It is a memory project. The work is in its 5th presentation since its initial debut 3 years ago. Sharmeen, currently, is still collecting the language, via different formats and hopes she can finally stop. Soon.
— —
Storytelling has been an artery of Sharmeen/Sifar’s practice for the last 18 years. She uses various mediums to communicate her thoughts and style, and often moves through images and texts.
She has put her organising, camera/editing and design skills towards collaborating with varied communities in Singapore, in hopes of visually presenting lesser-known truths. Topics of social urgency, such as natural history, cultural amnesia, displacement and ignored societal lived experiences are a driving force for her to coalesce and devise her works currently.
From 2018, she has been on the organising team of social change-oriented Freedom Film Festival Singapore, and has planned panels and workshops, expanding discussions of film’s importance and relevance to social change.
Her film projects have been screened locally and internationally for the last 10 years. In 2021, Scene Unseen, a music documentary about the underground in Singapore, premiered at Singapore International Film Festival. The premiere also had a band showcase that Sharmeen co-organised.
Sharmeen/Sifar is Nina Chabra’s creative work alter-ego. @sharmeen_sifar