Always, Already Injured. George Tavern, London. 2011.

Mixed media. Paper, Cloth, Photographs. Various dimensions.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Always, Already Injured (2011) seeks to attempt to answer the question posed by Judith Butler in Frames of War as to what are the conditions that make a life grievable.

The work explores a photograph that I came across of a young girl with her younger brother and mother at Southall station, caught by CCTV, minutes before they jumped to their deaths. Haunted by it ever since I saw it I seek to understand why this image matters or why it should matter.

Using my own voice exploring gender within a South Asian framework I explore this moment before death as my own missed encounter. The trauma, unspeakable as it is, is written albeit obliquely referencing autobiography, photographic theory and fiction or the unimaginable.

The text and the voice in that text alternate between being her, becoming her, being me. My own survival is seen as a lucky aberration as opposed to the necessary end it should see as produced by gendered structures.

In grieving for a stranger, for her loss, for my own survival I hope to finally make this loss,this image, this life matter.

At the closing of the exhibition, Lucie Galand and Robbie Lockwood performed a soundwork in response to this work which can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/33098316,http://vimeo.com/33087506 and http://vimeo.com/33052364. You can read more about their exciting work here: http://galandlockwood.wordpress.com/