Gut Feelings Meri Jaan by Jasleen Kaur was commissioned by UP Projects in partnership with Touchstones Rochdale. The project began in 2017 and the final outcome was presented as an exhibition at Touchstones from 23 October 2021 until 13 February 2022, and encompassed a two-day film trail in various locations around Rochdale.
Created in response to the local archives held at Touchstones, Gut Feelings Meri Jaan is a multi-faceted project, fore-fronting the voices of migrant communities within the social history of Rochdale, which have historically been marginalised and misrepresented.
During the dark winter evenings of lockdown in late 2020 and early 2021, Jasleen Kaur invited a group of women and gender non-conforming people from Rochdale’s Pakistani, Bengali and Punjabi communities to join her in a series of online conversations examining and reflecting on the contents of the local history archives at Touchstones, asking “what do we find when we go looking for ourselves in the archive…how can we alter the course of history through a new script?”
Kaur and the group (Alina Akbar, Nasrine Akhtar, Rizwana Ali, Shakra Butt, Rahela Khan and Bushra Sultana) interrogated how cultural memory is preserved, exploring ideas around inheritance and belonging, land and migration, ritual and healing. This collaborative process resulted in a series of films which meddle with traditional archival approaches, and a single edition book, ‘A Lexicon of Gut Feelings Meri Jaan’, documenting extracts from the group’s conversations and introducing new classifications and search terms, while highlighting previously neglected voices in the archive.
The films re-mix customs preserved by group members, performed at local sites bound up in histories of Empire and post-war migration from former colonies. Members of the resulting diasporas wash the statue of an industrialist with handfuls of yoghurt (living culture) the same thick, tart, dhai served alongside biryani that has properties to heal the gut, where trauma is stored. The human body - a living archive and carrier of histories - consumes and digests historical documents, processing this knowledge anew.
The final act of Gut Feelings Meri Jaan culminated in a ceremony during which the book, printed on seed paper, was dismantled page by page and read aloud by members of the South Asian community, before being planted in the soil at the Deeplish Community Centre, where the seeds from those pages will grow into a living legacy for the future. A permanent film installation capturing this ceremony will be installed in the Local Studies Centre at Touchstones Rochdale.
Evolving from Institution to soil, Gut Feelings Meri Jaan resists any archival logic or formal framework. What would be gazed at or read becomes digested or buried bringing the past, present and future of the archive and the power it holds under new scrutiny.
Gut Feelings Meri Jaan was curated and commissioned by UP Projects in partnership with Touchstones Rochdale. It was generously funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, Foyle Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, Rochdale Borough Council and Arts Council England.
The UP Podcast
Over the course of two episodes The UP Podcast will take an in-depth look at two of UP Projects most recent commissions – The Terrarium by Shezad Dawood and Gut Feelings Meri Jaan by Jasleen Kaur – exploring the themes, processes and implications surrounding these artworks through the voices of the artists themselves and those they have collaborated with.
To find out more about the themes and process behind Gut Feelings Meri Jaan, listen to Episode Two of The UP Podcast. This episode features a conversation between Jasleen Kaur and journalist and critic, Hettie Judah alongside voices of the community members she worked with and Touchstones, Rochdale.
Resources
Gut Feelings Meri Jaan: Activity Pack Introduction
▶️ Video
👤 Ages: 9 - 11, 12 - 16
Join Bryan Beresford, Curatorial & Community Engagement Coordinator at Touchstones with project collaborators, Bushra Sultana and Alina Akbar, as they introduce the activity pack created for a series of workshops inspired by the commission, Gut Feelings Meri Jaan by Turner Prize Winner, Jasleen Kaur.
Gut Feelings Meri Jaan: Activity Pack
📝 PDF
👤 Ages: 9 - 11, 12 - 16
This activity pack allow schools to teach students about moving image and photographic processes using alternative ‘camera-less’ techniques, alongside the development of narratives and storyboards through experimentation with text and illustration. The activity pack has been designed with content and activities to explore the themes of the exhibition Gut Feelings Meri Jaan by Turner Prize Winner, Jasleen Kaur.
About Jasleen Kaur
Jasleen Kaur (b.1986, Glasgow, Scotland) is an artist based in London. Her work is an ongoing exploration into the malleability of culture and the layering of social histories within the material and immaterial things that surround us. Her practice examines diasporic identity and hierarchies of history, both colonial and personal. She works with sculpture, video and writing.
Recent and upcoming commissions include Wellcome Collection, UP Projects, Glasgow Women’s Library, Market Gallery, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Eastside Projects and Hollybush Gardens. Her work is part of the permanent collection of Touchstones Rochdale, Royal College of Art and Crafts Council.
