How to Speak my Mother’s Caring Words
Paean Sarkar
22 September - 27 October, 2025
How to Speak my Mother’s Caring Words is a collection of text messages in Bengali from Paean’s mother, in which she asks about her day and her health while she was away. The phrases are projected alongside their English phonetic spellings so that they could be repeated aloud by both Bengali and non-Bengali speakers.
Transliteration in English is a medium through which the artist often exemplifies language preservation in immigrant households and diaspora. Sometimes this manifests in humour, but it is always an invitation to aesthetically engage with language that is most likely not one’s own.
Audiences’ closeness to the Bengali language will naturally determine their engagement with the text. However, the general sentiment of love and care from mother to daughter is preserved in the work despite varying levels of access (through looking, reading, repeating).
ARTIST
Throughout her practice, Paean has been interested in the aesthetics and politics of ‘absence’. The medium of a public facade projection provides her the opportunity to tease out many ideas of absence through a new material dimension.
@artsbypaean
Untitiled
By Paean Sarkar
22 September - 27 October, 2025Belltower Facade
On display each night from 5:30pm-11:30pm
420 Brunswick Street,
Judith Wright Arts Centre,
Fortitude Valley, QLD
Gallery
Documentation coming soon