H_ME W_RK
H_ME W_RK is a collective of South Asian artists living, making and sharing on unceded First Peoples lands.
Hello :))
Watch a film with us?
Keep scrolling down..
.. down
H_ME W_RK presents Rewind ↞
by Priya Pavri and Aziz Sohail
We're excited to share three queer films, each meditating on themes of blood and chosen family, community, love and friendship.
Tuesday 25th July 2023, 7 pm at Long Play
We are starting with a trip down memory lane to celebrate Nisha Ganatra’s award winning 90s-lesbian-cult-classic, Chutney Popcorn (1999).
Reena is a young, gay Indian-American woman who offers to be a surrogate mother for her sister's baby, hoping to improve her relationship with their disapproving mother. Now she just needs to convince her commitment-phobic girlfriend to go along with the idea.
Think Bend it Like Beckham but she doesn’t end up with the guy!
Run time 1 hr 32 mins.
Tuesday 8th August 2023, at Long Play
We are not spoilt for choice when it comes to South Asian queer representation, but these two films exquisitely explore the breath of story and generous presentations of their protagonists worlds.
Yeh Freedom Life (2018), directed by Priya Sen, tries to keep up with its Sachi and Parveen as they manoeuvre erratic and unpredictable love in dense streets of Ambedkar Nagar, a working class district of New Delhi. They are surrounded by a cacophonous city; they are both in love with other women. The film stays with them and their desire for 'freedom lives', outside society and family's constant scrutiny and sanction.
Run time 70 mins.
Does Your House Have Lions (2021) is an experimental docu-film by Delhi-based poet vqueeram and LA-based artist Vishal Jugdeo, following a queer household of activists and academics living and working in New Delhi under the shadow of increasing authoritarianism.
Run time 49 mins.
Register Here! It's Free! Register Here! It's Free! Register Here! It's Free!
Poster design by Roshan Ramesh.
H_ME W_RK presented our 2022 iteration of Kēl > Khel with friends Artree Collective and Kutti Collective.
Kēl > Khel Part 2
-
Collective Care
with Artree Collective
This year, H_ME W_RK and Arts Gen presents Digital Landscapes, four experimental audio journeys with artists Merinda Dias-Jayasinha, Isha Ram Das, Moonis Ahmad Shah x Hafsa Sayeed and Priya Namana.
In these sensitive and (sometimes) absurd scores, the artists meditate on the intergenerational memory of cross-border mobility with their emergent landscapes.
2021
We began cultivating new pathways for artists to share time, space and practice across the global diaspora.
delivered the first
iteration of Kēl > Khel.
Kel means ‘to listen’ in Tamil and Khel means ‘to play’ in Hindi. We delivered six digital workshops by international artists in the subcontinent and the global diaspora. Invited artists provoked norms, shared practice and new methodologies for collaboration.
The workshops had multiple purposes - democratise the international engagement space, combat cultural erasure, and create space to listen to artists speak about their practice, process, instrument and treatment.
Importantly, we wanted to create generative dialogue that did not dissolve into essentialist notions of identity.
Workshops presented
-
Many Lives of Theatre
with Amitesh Grover
-
The Artist is Not Present
with Mallika Taneja
-
Crises, Whales and I
with Shezad Dawood
-
Poetic Imaginaries
with Sanjukta Wagh
-
Do You See the Invisible?
with Afrah Shafiq
-
Myriad Incomplete Pieces
with Anuja Ghosalkar
H_ME W_RK partnered with Hot Sauce to fundraise over $5000 for the mutual aid of #thebangaloreproject and, with Liminal Magazine, to develop Witnessing & Caring for India 2021, a non comprehensive directory of information, support and ways to help during the Covid-19 pandemic.
2020
is born
We began dreaming about a space for practice sharing, knowledge exchange and friendship that privileges oust side institutions, for and amongst South Asians in so-called Australia and the diaspora.
H_ME W_RK is born from the soft reverberations within us: building a fire to gather, to share warmth, to weave stories that make no demands and offer no alternatives to truth. Stories that witness our becoming and unbecoming, collapse the distance between us and our ancestors, and make it possible to dream.