Next up at West Space | ‘Angna Mein’ by Quishile Charan and Zaiba Khan

Opening Saturday July 23, West Space is presenting ‘Angna Mein,’ a landmark exhibition by Quishile Charan and Zaiba Khan, exploring the intimacy of craft within the Indo-Fijian context, and the ways which stories and histories are passed down within families who make.

As members of the Indo-Fijian diaspora living in Aotearoa New Zealand and Naarm (Melbourne) Australia, in this exhibition, Quishile Charan and Zaiba Khan bring their respective craft-based practices together for the first time – Charan’s textile projects and Khan’s silver and goldsmithing work – to create a space that speaks to histories of indentured labour, and facilitate the passage of intergenerational knowledge and stories.

Charan and Khan are the grandchildren of the last Indo-Fijian generation to have a direct connection to indentured labour. As such, the works in Angna Mein are a seeding of memory. Each maker captures glimpses into their respective grandmother’s handicrafts, Zaiba with her Dadi’s crochet and Quishile with her Aaji’s textile dye work. These practices are inextricably connected to family networks throughout time. Angna Mein acts as a physical experience of culture and family across time and place, demonstrative of the ways the Indo-Fijian community can come together around narratives, storytelling and craft – despite the complex history of movement and migration that defines the lives of many in the diaspora.

Quishile Charan

Quishile Charan is an Indo-Fijian textile maker, researcher and writer living and working in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Charan’s practice focuses on sustaining the shared cultural practices of craft, a knowledge system which she inherited through being her Aaji’s (paternal grandmother) namesake.

As a woman and descendent of Girmit (indentured labour), Charan undertakes her responsibility to build counter-colonial narratives for Girmitiya women. Charan’s practice looks at the multifarious forms of women’s resistance against colonialism and patriarchy threaded throughout Fiji’s history.

Through revaluing women’s work, such as craft, which is often not considered “real labour” or a means to orate history, Charan explores how craft can function as contemporary forms of resistance to colonialism.

Zaiba Khan

Zaiba Khan is a Muslim Indo-Fijian artist based in Narrm/Melbourne, Australia and born in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Khan’s practice is craft-based, engaging with object-making through gold and silversmithing, printmaking and textile. Khan seeks to translate the oral histories of her ancestors into visual language. Intricately detailed, labour intensive works are made using organic matter and sacred materials. As a descendent of Girmit (indentured labour), these materials hold particular significance, as does the labour of the body and hands. For Khan, making catalyses an innate ancestral muscle memory. Exploring the divine potential of the seed and its fruit, Khan sows them into her work as her ancestors did into the land, except this time with autonomy; in the hopes of creating portals for connection and healing.

Key Details

Exhibition dates: Saturday July 23 to Sunday August 21, 2022

Event to celebrate the opening of the exhibition Angna Mein – all welcome — Saturday July 23, 3–5pm

A workshop with Zaiba Khan, in partnership with The Social Studio. Open to the public. Further details to come — Saturday August 20

Location: West Space, Collingwood Yards. 102/30 Perry Street, Collingwood, VIC, 3066

More info: westspace.org.au