Narmin Kassam

Artist Statement

My ongoing series, With One Voice, explores how migration, memory, relationships, and care shape belonging. Building on my earlier series, Beautiful Voice, these mixed-media paintings on wood panels reflect my interest in how our sense of identity develops through our connections with others. At the heart of my practice is the belief that belonging is not simply something we inherit. We create it through care, connection, and shared humanity.

As an African-born South Asian woman and former refugee, I bring my own experiences of migration and cultural identity to the work. I am interested in what we carry with us and what is passed between generations, not only through stories, but through gestures, touch, care, and simply being present for one another. The women often lean toward each other, creating moments of closeness, trust, and shared presence.

Each painting begins with an emotional intention. Through preliminary drawings, I explore gesture, proximity, movement, and tension before turning to the materials themselves. Over many years, I have collected handmade and decorative papers from Japan, India, and other parts of the world. Together, they have become a material archive, a visual vocabulary of colour, pattern, texture, and cultural memory.

Collage is central to how I tell these stories. I select, tear, cut, layer, paint, remove, and refine papers as the work develops. Patterns and fragments move between body, clothing, and background, sometimes making it difficult to see where one ends and another begins. Individual pieces remain visible even as they become part of something larger, much like the different experiences and histories we carry into our relationships with others. The artist's hand remains visible in torn edges, painted surfaces, accumulated layers, and traces of decisions made and remade.

Fragments from one painting are often carried into another, creating an evolving material archive across the series. A piece of paper may begin in one work and reappear in another, taking on a new relationship and meaning. For me, paper is more than a surface or decorative element. It carries traces of movement, memory, place, and cultural inheritance.

The women in these paintings do not speak loudly. Much of what happens between them is expressed through proximity, gesture, shared weight, and quiet attention. I am interested in how people can come together without losing what makes them distinct. With One Voice ultimately asks how belonging can be created between people through what we carry, what we share, and the relationships we build with one another.