Layla Kassan

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

3am

At 3am on the 3rd day of the 3rd month, I woke up to grief. I had received word of my father’s passing. It was an untimely passing. Though his cancer diagnosis had come just weeks earlier, no amount of anticipatory grief could have prepared me for the shock of suddenly losing him. The sun had not risen yet. On my flight back home, I was preparing myself to face my grieving family. I was floating in a liminal space, one of transition into a new phase of my life. I entered my home - the one that I left filled with love and warmth - now transformed into a space of palpable heaviness and funeral preparations. Home is a sacred space of comfort and grounding, and now my sense of home has been disrupted. 

Without my father’s presence, I am homesick for a home that is no longer there. *** For my father’s funeral, marigolds were used during the mourning ceremonies that take place within my Hindu faith. Through the process of seeping, sedimentation, filtration and grinding, I have created a pigment using marigold petals. This pigment was combined with water and gum arabic to create a watercolour paint. I have formed a version of home through the lens of my grief. My childhood images have been broken down into elements of a collage, which were then transferred onto the watercolour paper via acetone and a printing press. The clarity of transfers is unpredictable, mirroring elements of the grieving process. Through the use of my fragmented memories and my marigold watercolour, I have reconstructed a space in which the corporeality of my now imagined home rests.   

The creation of my body of work, 3am, has given me a medium to process my grief. My intentions were to illustrate how grief changes your perception of home, a topic that would have never crossed my mind prior to going through it myself. Memories that were previously stored safely in childhood photographs were brought to light, acting as both a wound and a comfort in a period of loss. My beloved marigolds have brought me solace, through the rituals performed in mourning and within my artistic practice. Embracing the uncertainty, my practice mirrors the process of grief and portrays the transformation of identity intertwined with the meaning of home. Using fragmented memories and marigold pigments, I have created a space in which the corporeality of my home lives.