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Asian gay community speaks out

31/ 8/2007

Sphere: dreamz, a project challenging the cultural and geographical divide between Manchester’s gay village and the city’s South Asian community, opens at Manchester's Cornerhouse next month.

Working with paper, fabric and video, Shanaz Gulzar, Maya Chowdhury and Jaheda Choudhury offer a voice to an otherwise invisible South Asian lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community.

Video work presented in the foyer as part of Sphere: dreamz features anonymous women, captured only in silhouette.

The project provided a secure environment in which the women could speak openly about their sexuality and the result is a "rare, candid look" into an often hidden life.

The manipulated, abstract footage also features imagery taken from the first Sphere: dreamz installation in Sackville Park in 2006.

Organza drapes used in the initial open-air event will be used to dress the windows of Cornerhouse’s ground floor bar throughout the exhibition, one printed with the silhouette of a woman interviewed in the video and two left plain in contrasting colours.

Specially produced wallpaper will feature treated shots from the video and then used to decorate one wall of the Café Bar, creating a mural that is sympathetic to the same powerful messages contained in the video.

The exhibition is part of a wider project titled Mixing It Up, with Shanaz, Maya and Jaheda joining other artists exhibiting work in a number of gallery and non-gallery venues from Sangam Restaurant on the Curry Mile to Urbis in the city centre via Oxford Road and Canal Street.

The project mixes up the concept of where we expect art to be seen and forces interaction between the two communities by placing symbols of Canal Street’s gay culture in Rusholme and vice versa.

Cornerhouse Projects is an ongoing series of exhibitions in and around Cornerhouse featuring new work by emerging artists based in the North West.

Catch Sphere: dreamz from Fri 7 September – Sun 11 November 2007.

For more information call 0161 228 7621 or visit www.cornerhouse.org

Click on the link below to read an exclusive interview with artist Jaheda Choudhury