Sascha Aurora Akhtar, Pakistan
The Caged Bird

I am a poet and photographer. My photography has always had a symbolic feel to it. Images that are symbolic of something abstract – emotion, memory, document. In this series, I have used the words I was given, as they inspired my poetic sensibility and used my symbolic imagery to meld with them and vice versa. I have always been interested in ideas of freedom. My own life has been dictated by this desire for freedom. I left Pakistan when I was 18 in a quest for this elusive freedom.

My work is marked by experimentation. My shows are different every time. I enjoy using digital tools as I used to use other tools in the darkroom. My art is, however, always concerned with the same things, whether in film, words, photo, music or dance, which are all forms I have and continue to work with. I am constantly engaged in a mystical world full of symbolism and imagery. I am concerned with the transcendental, with the hidden element to life, with the batin rather than the zahir, or apparent. This is a sufi idea but perhaps it is why the quote from Huxley has always stayed with me: There are things known, and things unknown and in between there are doors.

This collection then, is a synchronistic body. A mystic poet’s words and my images, talking to each other.