Favorite Book:

My favorite book at the moment is Anima, by Wajdi Mouawad. In reading it, I discovered core elements of what kind of artist I want to be. The first part of the book is told from the perspective of various different animals who are observers to what's happening to the protagonist. I find it fascinating and inspirational, each character sees the world in a vastly different way, how the points of interest for a cat versus the points of interest for a spider or a cockroach or a horse are snapshots into how they see the world differently, which I've started to character work.

"Insecte, oiseau, chien, et humain ont par moments plus a voir l'un avec l'autre que chacun avec ses propres semblables."  - Wajdi Mouawad, (Anima)

It is a deeply rooted belief of mine that all things in this world are interconnected. My work is heavily influenced by the natural world around me. ​

The way that the author describes things, I would like to be able to make something like that but instead of with words on a page, with my body and my voice. 
There's a particular passage which describes the antagonist, the way he looks and the way he moves. 

"Dans sa nudité, chaque pas, chaque mouvement, exhibait la souplesse de sa musculature aux ondulations si harmonieuses, si sensuelles qu'elles semblaient donner vie aux bêtes tatouées sur son corps." 
"Il est sorti de ses vêtements comme un animal sauvage sort de sa tanière dans tout l'éclat de sa puissance. Un félin sublime de bestialité. Jamais encore je n'avais contemplé une pareille musculature chez un humain. C'était, en soi, une vision, un paysage, d'autant plus surprenant que le tatouage, dont je n'avais fait que soupçonner l'ébauche, s'est révélé entièrement à moi à la faveur des reflets de la nuit." 
"Était-ce un homme ou une pierre ou un arbre?" 
- Wajdi Mouawad, (Anima)

I would like to be able to describe with my body what Wajdi Mouawad describes with his words. I want to be able to move like this character that he describes, to see the world and make contact with it in such a varied, delicate, intimate way like how his characters do in my imagination. I'm not there yet, but I know what it looks like now, I can see it in my mind's eye, and I will get there. 

​A main part of this book is a parallel between the genocide which has been and continues to be committed over the last few centuries against the indigenous peoples of North America by the settler-colonisers from Europe, and the genocide which has been and continues to be committed against the Palestinian people by the Israeli settler-colonisers in the last 80 years. It's a vital comparison, and the work that Wajdi Mouawad makes is necessary and sensitive. His interrogation of the nuances of the human experiences, of the unanswerable questions that must be asked, the search for answers when we're not even sure what the question we're asking is, the looking into the soul of another human being and seeing yourself reflected there, the small acts of mercy, the constant asking of "why?", the diving into the void in the inmost depths of a human soul to search for the answer, it filled me with thoughts and questions that I want to explore in my own work, as well as a need to say things that need saying with the work that I'm making. 

All art is political. I will continue to be political in my work, because there is no point in speaking if I have nothing to say. 

Only speak when silence won't do
Only move when stillness won't do;
And when silence will not do, speak!
And when stillness will not do, move!

Free Palestine.