Zenab Kazmi

فقیری چھاپ Faqiri Chaap - A Shrine of Queer Becoming

Installation including textile soft sculpture, ghungroo, and framed projection.

“Faqiri Chaap is a soft-sculptural video installation that reimagines queer embodiment through a Sufi lens. Rooted in movement, ritual, and memory, this work inhabits the Third Space that Homi K. Bhabha speaks of: a space between borders, between selves, where contradiction is not a conflict but a process of becoming.At the heart of the installation is a found wooden frame, suspended on the wall, inside which a layered video composed of visuals of my feet adorned with ghungroos performing dhamaal to the beat of the dhol is played. The video is stitched between images of my past and present spaces. My voice moves through the piece in Urdu, carrying questions, declarations, and longing. Only three phrases appear in the text:“Kaun hun mein?” — “Who am I?” کون ہوں میں؟“Haan, Yahi hai manzil!”—"Yes, this is the destination!” ہاں، یہی ہے منزل! “Hum-jinss parasti k naam. Ishq k naam.” — “In the name of queerness. In the name of Love.” ہم جنس پرستی کے نام! عشق کے نام! These are not subtitles. They are offerings. They are pauses. They are breaths.To the left of the projection hangs a soft sculpture of a vulva, hand-stitched from chiffon and velvet (from Pakistan). It is framed by a found oval mirror frame that was once shattered and is now made sacred. To the right, the ghungroos I wore during dhamaal now hang quietly, holding the memory of movement. A triptych of this vulva appears in the video when I speak of the destination. The religious symbolism of three positions the vulva as a site of reclamation. It becomes a subversive metaphor for power, memory, ritual, and devotion.The scripts that run through this piece exist as whispered zikr, sometimes defiant, sometimes desperate. It does not seek to explain queerness to religion nor religion to queerness. It lives where they already meet, in longing, in repetition, and in surrender. It is a call across time, lineage, and exile; a reminder that queer Muslims have always existed, and Ishq never belonged to just one kind of body. This is not a rebellion from faith but an invitation to return through love.”