All My Faces Stared Back At Me

Musawir Shabbir

6 September

- 27 September, 2024

My work is an attempt to deal with my existence, real or unreal, worthy or unworthy and the fragility of it all. It is an amalgamation of the life that I have experienced and the constant, solidified discomfort present inside the walls of my brain.

The decaying, vacant bodies of the dead birds and the abandoned, beaten stray dogs portrayed are a reflection of my inner conundrum, to exist or not to exist.

My existence, frail and limping

I am afraid, not of people or the future or the unseen but rather, of myself, my being. Breathing.

I have apprehensions, many in number concerning my state of being alive. I am very. afraid. I hope all of this paranoia that is cementing into my brain, declaring its permanence, slowly but surely, is merely a superstition.

I hope this feeling is fleeting. I hope I am more.

I used to think my problem lied with mathematics but I was always good at division and in dividing, somehow, I divided all of me. Head to knees to toes. All of me given up, to the world and its people. How must I collect all of myself? How must I build myself up piece by piece and does my problem still go back to mathematics? I was always good at dividing. How did I lose it all?

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