In this home, everything is in its place, and there is a place for everything. Everything is counted and loved, everything is put to use. Onika calls her work art ennuyeux (boring art)- she describes it as a diary of the mundane details of the quotidian. Self-defamation is a self-protective, pre-emptive move of her part, not a warning that the viewers should heed. While there are no tales of revolution, nor chronicles of political tectonic shifts, nor industrial-scale tragedy, this is not an exhibition that is boring.

Home is rich with vitality and attentiveness; it is painted with an ancient desire to survive. It is a celebration of finding home. If you have known the loneliness of not-belonging, you know this celebration has no end. In Onika’s galaxy of doorknobs, light bulbs, pens – traversed by worn house slippers and brooms – Onika is marking her space, taking oath of citizenship. This documentation has spanned years, and the meanings that Onika makes for herself translate across to us, her audience. As much as she has tried to make the writing on her canvases cryptic (writing upside down and backwards in a tiny script), she communicates loud and clear. The only thing that is unclear is if she chooses the object or the object chooses her, but one imagines it must be mutual.

The doorknob turns no matter what happened within, the coffee pot serves on bad and good days, the window opens the same way on a birthday. In the vastness between one action and the next, our bodies are voyager ships in an infinity, carrying our imaginations, spirits and visions. And Onika is wise to celebrate habit, routine, and boredom. These are conditions that grant us the peace to be. For we are not here forever, not for so long at all. And while we are here, it helps to feel at home, in our skin, in our rooms, in our world, so we can love it all, attentively.

Explore the artwork details – by Nasrin Jahan Onika.