How can we, as workers of the imaginary, recognize the significance and the poetics of being when all manners of racism, war and patriarchal violence redirect the gaze from our indisputable presence? “For Real For Real” at Berlin’s daadgalerie (16 May – 27 July) gathers together artists working to bring us closer to the particularities, obsessions, peculiarities, playfulness, obscurity, wonderment of a single one doing life, being alive, loving, seeing, making, breaking, collapsing, doing and doing in the wild wilderness of now.

For Real For Real is presented by The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII), an interdisciplinary cultural laboratory founded by the poet Claudia Rankine. The exhibition holds collective artworks, readings, talks, and screenings.

My work is called Bahar (2025), which translates to 'spring', a time when this project was made and what it represents. I concocted my own plant dyes and inks from rummaging the plants in my garden to old fruits and vegetables to paint and draw in the book. I created poems and collaged from birthday cards growing up. My grandmother and I sewed our favourite flowers on to cotton fabrics dyed in avocado pit water, which was delicately placed on to the seeded papers of my work. 


Here is the manifesto for my earth-friendly art book featured at the gallery below: 

I am writing myself into bloom

This project is an act of self-autobiography

Rooted in soil and symbols

Abeer(a) means fragrance of flowers or ‘to express’

It is the lens in which I explore my becoming

Tracing the cycles of growth, decay and renewal of plants

Borrowed from old Victorian Floriography codes, Pakistani botanicals and Arabic script

Every petal or word is grief and joy

I have spent 23 hours to represent my 23 years of age

Each hour is a layer of my life

Soaking, budding, wilting, unfolding, dyeing, layering, drawing, painting, veining 

This is not a static work

It lives and breathes

Made from seeded papers and earth-friendly materials (as biodegradable as possible)

The pages will be buried and returned to earth

So flowers blossom again. 

Press

DAAD gallery

Abeera Qureshi feature

Lisson gallery

Berlin Art Link

Haus Fur Poesie