Venn Diagram

This piece was made for 'par-al-lax' - an exhibition by London-based artists of mixed heritage and ethnicity. Of mixed Pakistani and English heritage, and my mother is English. My attitude and that of modern society has changed towards those with mixed heritage. When I was growing up in the 70s/80s my background brought me embarrassment and confusion. I couldn’t understand why others thought I was so different. My siblings have much darker skin than me – I look white – and this also led to me having to explain my funny foreign name. Sometimes this was met with disbelief and I constantly seemed to have to justify who I was. I could never just be myself. Venn Diagram illustrates these two sides of my identity. It is based on the idea of a Venn Diagram – with the cross section in the middle having two layers of glass. This intersection – the mixing of the two sides and of different colours and textures of glass – gives a rich and complex surface. The mixing of both sides of my family gives me a richer life experience but also a more complex relationship with the world. The parallax effect – the thickness of the glass - means that as you move around the piece, the view changes slightly, symbolic of my (and others) shifting attitude to my background. The lines of multi coloured glass leading to the central motif describes the many hundreds of generations behind me – we are all the culmination of countless unions of different families, cultures and peoples. The marbles illustrate my once fractured view of non-mixed race people – whole and perfect.