Liliquoi Blue - God Made Me a Boy
1 Aug 2009
Qasim Riza ShaheenBy Qasim Riza Shaheen
In the winter of 2009, CityArts will be relocating to its new permanent home on 15 Bachelor's Walk. In accordance with this opening, Manchester artist Qasim Riza Shaheen, is researching and developing an exciting new body of work for CityArts called Liliquoi Blue - God Made Me a Boy. Based in The Fire Station Artists' Studios, Qasim Riza Shaheen is working with the local Filipino community in Dublin's north inner city, around notions of beautification, personal icons and childhood memories, to create a collection of indoor as well as outdoor installations.
Curated by Liz Burns, Liliquoi Blue - God Made Me a Boy is based on the cultural changes that Capel Street and Mary Street, part of Dublin's (HARP) Historic Rejuvenation Area, have seen in recent years. A rapid increase in hair salons and beauty parlours catering to the new immigrant communities have created succesful businesses as well as valuable social and networking spaces for the Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Polish populations in particular. In mirroring the hair salon, the Lilliquoi Blue - God Made Me a Boy project will serve as a metaphor for the creation of new social spaces, where alternative publics and audiences might creatively engage with or encounter one another. The final installation, will involve a public art dimension and a live performance with an accompanying multi-media installation developed by Shaheen in collaboration with the local Filipino community.
The Filipino community in Ireland expanded in 2001, with many people coming to work in the health service. In Dublin, the Filipinos remain a largely invisible community within Ireland. The baklas, the transgendered community, themselves are an accepted part of the Filipino community with huge crowds attending the Alternative Miss Phillipines, an annual beauty pagent.
The work of Qasim Riza Shaheen is particularly resonant, in terms of his interest in the transient identities of migrants and migrant communities, e.g. Khusra: Stains and Stencils (2008), a live performance and presentation of work by Shaheen resulting from an engagement with the khushra or transgendered communities in Shaheen's native Lahore, Pakistan.
Qasim Riza Shaheen is a based in Manchester, in the UK. His work has been programmed widely including at The National Review of Live Art, Glasgow; Liverpool Biennial; Port City & Breathing Space at Arnolfini in Bristol; Castlefield Gallery in Manchester; Alhamra National Gallery and Rohtas Gallery in Lahore, Pakistan where he has recently taught and completed an artist residency with the National College of Arts. He has been Associate Artist at the Greenroom in Manchester since 2004 and is the founder/artistic director of Anokha Laadla, a live art company based in the UK.
The Liliquoi Blue - God Made Me a Boy project has been made possible with the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland and The Fire Station Artists' Studios.
