SAFEDI Shama Khanna (they/she)

Share

Shama Khanna

'Queer Diasporic Futurity' by Flatness

The book, 'Queer Diasporic Futurity' by Flatness, proposes that a sense of futurity (entangled with the past and the present – Saidiya Hartman), inextricably linked with praxes of sustainability, visibility, and joy, is a condition of participation by many QTIPOC (Queer Trans Intersex identified People of Colour) in the arts. The research emphasises the importance of self-care, interdependence and creativity within and alongside the context of activist community formations in challenging social, ecological and land injustice. Drawing upon decolonial theory and land rights discourse, Queer Diasporic Futurity is a fugitive relation to institutions who require an EDI policy, for whom EDI is not a foundational value and ethos.

Contributors include: Rasheeqa Ahmad, Daniella Valz Gen, not/nowhere, Decolonising Economics (with Evan Ifekoya, Amardeep Singh Dhillon and June Bellebono), Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Adam Farah and Aditi Jaganathan. With book design by Design Print Bind.

Shama 2

One of the first 'Queer Diasporic Futurity' commissions to go live on flatness.eu alongside the new book, is Herbalist Rasheeqa Ahmad’s 'Plant Medicine of the City: A Seasonal Diary'. In the coming year Rasheeqa will be sharing the seasonal changes she observes and works with in this special urban plant life diary for Flatness. Responding to the theme of the book she writes;

A diaspora in itself is made of curls and edges and unexpectabilities, with the spontaneity to alchemise and metamorphose more instantly, which we see in cultural expression in diasporic London. So a futurity guided by this transformative nature, what does it mean? Not a linear determined progression but an ability to roll around in the experiment of where we are… what do these fiery colourful edges conceal? …

… ‘Earthlove’ has rooted and sturdied me in my living and being in this heavy city, made me realise how the flourishing and health and balance of life is an ongoing surfing action, and in our making of our environment, social and planetary, we can seek to vitalise this balance. Practical ways we can do this are watching and observing, feeling the air and the signs, following threads and connections with the beings around us. The city is very alive. Matching of resources is a process that feels homeostatic in impulse, through our networks of land interaction and community herb gardens and neighbourhood projects, where we can live in inspired collaboration with these beings – this is a shared goal between us. Seeds, plants, ideas, needs, responses – this coming year we will meet each other to exchange these and keep rotating, turning in exploratory ways, reflecting each other to understand how to evolve.

Shama 4


The wider SAFEDI project

This project is one of six commissions as part of AHRC funded project SAFEDI (Social Art for Equality Diversity and Inclusion). SAFEDI is an AHRC fellowship led by Manchester Metropolitan University, Social Art Network, & Axis, working with social artists, marginalised communities and policy makers around the UK to rethink what inclusion in the arts means.

Find out more here >


Image descriptions:

Image 1
Screenshot from Rasheeqa Ahmad's 'Plant Medicine for the City: A Seasonal Diary' for Queer Diasporic Futurity by Flatness

Image description: A phone camera image showing the hand of a brown person handling a stem of a Rosehip bush.

Image 2
Image by Adam Farah from the exhibition WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM YOU AND MYSELF (PEAK MOMENTATIONS / INSIDE MY VELVET ROPE MIX) at Camden Arts Centre 2021.

Image description: An image showing the hand of a brown person holding a collection of supplements and home-made medicines.

Image 3
Screenshot from Rasheeqa Ahmad's 'Plant Medicine for the City: A Seasonal Diary' for Queer Diasporic Futurity by Flatness

Image description: A phone camera image showing the hand of a brown person handling a stinging nettle plant to expose the green seeds beneath its leaves.


Links

Rasheeqa Ahmad’s 'Plant Medicine of the City: A Seasonal Diary' for Flatness.

Interview with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley by Flatness for Feminist Review and Women’s Art Library, April 2021

 

Share