HIDDEN PLACES, SACRED SPACES

To commemorate Bermuda’s 6th annual Pride celebration, we are honoured to partner with photojournalist and visual artist Ishrat (Ish) Yakub, to display her work Hidden Places, Sacred Spaces. Through photographs and audio statements, this multimedia work shares the stories and voices of 7 Queer, Black Bermudians and their individual experiences within and outside of their communities. The work explores the ideas of belonging and of not belonging, and the safe spaces that the individuals interviewed have found or created for themselves in physical places or within communities, friendships, and relationships where they feel at home. The narratives from the work will also be presented in an accompanying print book.

Hidden Places, Sacred Spaces will be on view in the Screening Room in the Butterfield Gallery from Monday, August 26 to Friday, September 6.

Creator and Photographer: Ishrat (Ish) Yakub
Editor: Marq Rodriguez

Artist Statement:

Where do we belong? How do we belong? The experience of belonging and its counterpart, not belonging or being othered, has been an experience I explore in my work as it relates to my own upbringing, being raised by conservative Muslim Bangladeshi parents as an expat in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Like a branch in a tree growing and forging its own path, how do we survive and thrive when the soil that we have been planted in does not nourish us. Where do we find our light to shine?

“Hidden Places, Sacred Spaces” explores a thread organically woven throughout all the individuals’ narratives – the influence of religion and subsequently finding one’s sense of spirituality.