ARTISTS

Raised in the Pakistani diaspora in Finland’s Åland Islands, Nayab Noor Ikram explores themes of cultural in-betweenship, identity, and memory through films, photographs, performances, and installations. In this film she enlists her family members to help her reenact an old domestic ritual—until the age of seven she always had her hair washed by her mother—which she transposes to the rugged coast of the Åland Islands. Ikram kneels before the camera as her mother gently washes her hair and rinses it with seawater collected by her father. Throughout, the family counts together from one to 20 in Urdu in a recurring call and response that alternately evokes the nostalgia of childhood and the importance of inherited tradition in diasporic communities.