Written by Bushra Gill
A professor in art school taught that an artist’s role in society was to show their work. Created in solitude, the work gains new meaning when it is shared with the world–lending images to ideas so they are understood intuitively.
When I finally returned to making art 20 years later, one of my first shows was at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, in an exhibition called Reflections of Home. At the opening, I learned about ARTogether, the organization that had co-organized the exhibit. The idea of being part of a group of artists who were all immigrants and so understood the pull between places and culture was both new and exciting. That was early March, 2020, and the show closed a week later along with the rest of the world. Fast forward a couple of years, and I am now reflecting on the pleasure of having curated an exhibition for ARTogether at the OACC, Longing For Attachment, that was on display earlier this year.
About My Artistic Journey
I emigrated from Pakistan at 5 with my family, grew up in suburban Texas, and went through the public schools learning to adapt to my largely-white peers. I always knew I was going to be an artist, which bewildered my family. Reluctantly, they let me go away to Pratt to study art in New York, and there too, I learned to adapt and be less foreign. I couldn’t relate to the “actual” Pakistani students studying abroad, and puzzled over how other “foreign” students actually preferred their cuisines and habits from home. It was the early 90’s, and the art world was full of Big Ideas and I didn’t know how to trust myself–or even know myself–enough to make work about the experiences of growing up caught between cultures.
Learning From Teaching
I turned to teaching, becoming a museum educator for a time, then abandoning the art world altogether for fashion, and then classroom education. I tried hard not to be an artist, but finally couldn’t not do it anymore when I realized my young sons would not need me as regularly for much longer. It took a couple of years of trying lots of things before a seed of an idea emerged, and it was one of those pieces that I entered into the show in March, 2020. The pandemic was an opportune time for me creatively to explore, make more work, and push my art career forward. In May, 2023, ARTogether offered to host me along with a few other artists for East Bay Open Studios, and with that experience, I felt my career shift. Curating my own work for the show forced me to look at it with a critical eye, and my museum education training was never more helpful. I had to tell the story of my ideas using just the work itself.
Storytelling Through Curation
This storytelling turned out to be a natural segue into curating. When ARTogether asked if I would be interested in curating their next show at OACC, From my conversations with other immigrant artists, I knew that we shared a sense of otherness and straddled multiple worlds. But otherness isn’t just an immigrant condition; anyone who has moved from one place to another has felt that way. And with that displacement, we are always looking back to what we left behind, what we were attached to in that other life.
So, I wrote a show proposal about that idea, one that I have been grappling with in my own work for some time: attachment. When we leave a place, we leave strings of connection to the people there, or to physical places, or to ideas or memories attached to that experience. It’s not an idea unique to immigrants, but I think migration makes us feel this more keenly.
Sure enough, the submissions came pouring in, poignant and powerful messages of longings for attachment felt deeply across cultures, genders and borders. I looked at the work from an educator’s perspective: how to share the stories of many artists in a way that viewers will see the big picture along with the individual works?
Shared Connections
In the process of putting the exhibition titled, “Longing for Attachment,” together, I noticed a few themes emerging as I reviewed the work submitted. I looked at all the work with the names covered, then read all the statements the same way. Relationships to people was a strong throughline, as it had been for me. Place, food and symbols were three other general ideas.
My series of work, titled “Attachments”, began when I was thinking about how we maintain ties with loved ones when we can’t see them. I always have a longing to connect with people and places left behind, as anyone who has moved from one place to another understands. This is especially true for immigrants who miss the culture that used to be a key identifier.
ARTogether has always been interested in facilitating an art community, with the added understanding that immigrants and children of immigrants have another set of challenges. Curating this show made all of the disparate artists into one group–creative people sharing their messages of attachment and creating new connections.
To see the artwork from Longing for Attachment, watch this video tour with commentary by Bushra, organized by theme.
About Bushra
Bushra Gill is interested in finding order within the chaos of everyday life through art. She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and emigrated to Houston, Texas, with her family as a small child. Drawn to art from a young age, she graduated from Pratt Institute in 1994, with a BFA in sculpture. She spent many years of working as a museum educator at various galleries and museums including The Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center and The Rotunda Gallery, while also working as a studio assistant to various artists including Maya Lin, Ursula von Rydingsvard and Maria Elena Gonzalez, as well as a career as a clothing designer and boutique owner in New York. In 2009, she moved to northern California with her family and returned to making art. In recent years, Gill has participated in many exhibitions in galleries across the United States. You can find out more about her at https://www.bushragill.com/
