Somewhere Between Not Knowing

Abstract

Somewhere Between Not Knowing is a 14-minute single-channel installation that traces three life stages—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—of Hamed, a queer Afghan-Canadian man navigating curiosity, shame, and desire amid the weight of family expectation and cultural silencing. A child’s voiceover recites excerpts of David Wojnarowicz’s prophetic 1990 poem Untitled (One Day This Kid…), translated into Farsi, layered with intertitles that punctuate and fracture the semi-autobiographical vignettes. Inspired by the legacy of visual artists who have regularly appropriated antecedent work, the installation employs remix and recontextualization as artistic strategies, echoing Wojnarowicz’s text while refracting it through a diasporic, queer coming-of-age archive. The work interrogates memory, representation, and reflection, asking how a universal queer text transforms when spoken through another language, another voice, and another body.