Tania De Rozario
This poem was first published in The Aleph Review, Vol. 2 (2018). Curated for the website by Alainah Aamir.
A poem for Bae Soo-mi
My sister blends into the wallpaper, pretending
she does not exist. She has practiced this so long,
my father has started believing her. The trouble is,
this whole damn house is wallpapered. Daisies
spilling onto pastel hues, roses winding their way
up knee walls, lilies lamenting their solitude
in the attic. All the flowers in the house
are patterns repeating themselves, ghosts
that manifest from one room to the next. I tell her
it is only a matter of time before father notices
her presence again: her body curled up in bed,
her silent eyes at dinner, the blood that pools
at her feet, staining the hands of his new wife.
Tania De Rozario is an artist, writer and curator interested in issues of gender and sexuality, representations of women in horror, and art as activism. Her practice hovers on the intersections between text and image, and her work has been showcased in London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Singapore, New York and San Francisco. Tania is the author of Tender Delirium (Math Paper Press, 2013; shortlisted for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize), the winner of the 2011 NAC-SPH Golden Point Award for English Poetry, and the recipient of the NAC Arts Creation Fund for her literary memoir, And The Walls Come Crumbling Down. She also runs EtiquetteSG, a multidisciplinary platform focused on developing and showcasing art, writing, film and music made by women, and is an Associate Artist with The Substation, Singapore’s oldest independent art centre. Her work with The Substation includes embarking on ‘Making Trouble’, a research project documenting links between visual art and activism in post-2000 Singapore.
Author bios for archival pieces may not be up to date, as they are published here as they were printed in the print edition.
Sana Saeed is a Lahore-based practicing artist. She completed her undergraduate degree with a distinction in visual arts from NCA in 2017, majoring in painting. Sana also learnt calligraphy and film making to enhance her artistic expression. She was received an excellence award at the Alhamra Young Artist Exhibition 2017 and is also a member of the Artist Residency Program at Shakir Ali Museum. Sana has displayed her work in different galleries of Pakistan, including Canvas Gallery Karachi, Full Circle Gallery Karachi, O Art Space Lahore and Zahoor-ul-Ikhlaq Gallery Lahore. She had her first solo show with Taseer Art Gallery Lahore and had her second solo show with O Art Space Lahore in 2021. She completed her master’s degree in 2022 and is working on her research report about partition 1947. Sana is currently teaching at the National College of Arts as a visiting faculty in the textile department.
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