it was always skipping me, 2018

4 channel video with sound, 45min

The four channel film, installed in four walls of a gallery, with the viewer moving throughout the space, explores the gaps in language and moments on no language throughout times of colonization, specifically in Albania. Working with my mother’s research and notes drafting the roots of the Albanian language as it moves through generations – still embedded with the influence of Turkish and Arabic language. The four performers, all immigrants and persons of color, yet white-washed when entering the States, firmly state at the viewer during the entirety of the film, nearly 45min long. They move through various translations from Arabic, Turkish, Albanian, and into English – pausing in silence, in solidarity with the silenced, whenever there is no mother term to express a word and they are bound to use the colonizers language.