Flowers Coming Out of Their Mouths

Sarah Khurshid Khan's Flowers Coming Out of Their Mouths Sarah Khurshid Khan rages into beauty, with the occasional gaali (swear), as if flowers floated out of her mouth. In her new solo show entitled "Flowers Coming Out of Their Mouths," Khan presents 21 new collaged works, in her on-going exploration of a 16th C Persian Cook/Book of Life from Central India. Khan re-imagines feminist African, Arab, Asian pasts while reframing our understanding of people and plants, their names, and their migrations by mining imperial archives—British Library, New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Botanical Garden. Playfully serious and seriously playful, Khan poignantly reclaims the right to narrate and name her manifold histories, ancestral and acquired. Her collages are laced with stylized plants and flowers inspired by indigenous African, Arab, and Asian ocean world peoples. Flora includes acacia trees, barley, black pepper, cinnamon, dates, frankincense, myrrh, orange blossom and rose. Peppered with ancient and Islamic geometries, her scenarios include diverse ancient maps, world languages, archival imagery from across regional ocean worlds, and hand-marbled papers. Among the pantheon of femmes and sheroes, porcelain weapons of mass creation/destruction adorn the gallery and complement her collages—as spice scents waft.