I was a different type of man back then

(2015-2016)

Single-channel projection, glassine, tracing paper, fishing wire

‘I was a different type of man back then’ is based on a conversation between myself and a man about his decision to give up his relationship with a woman in India, return to Pakistan, and marry the woman who was chosen for him by his family.

The single channel projection comprises photographs taken now of him and his family, as well as photographs he showed me of a time past in India. The images are projected onto two layers of glassine, and the edges fall onto a third layer - the wall beyond. The layers, differently sized, simultaneously erase and emphasise different people and relationships in the photographs. The fragile papers move as audiences move around the installation, changing the focus of the image, and size of the image on the screens, alluding to the unfixed nature of memory and the story retold.

The words ‘I was a different type of man back then’ in Urdu, spoken as he tried to remember, are cut into the first small letter-sized screen in a lateral inversion, making the words legible from between the edges of the 3rd layer of the projection and the second.