Carmen-Sibha Keiso & Fassih Keiso, 'Keisos'.

11 – 22 May 2024

The air was spinning dust and pebbles into little whirlwinds. I was just playing with the other kids in the village, girls and boys. We were lifting up our galabia’s, covering our heads with fabric, exposing the bottom halves of our bodies. None of us wore underwear. The women and men of the village were watching and laughing as the dust and pebbles hit my body, it was sensory, like a massage or a spa. It was the only physical activity which had made me aware of my body at that time.

I was born there in a small village called Saygr, in one of the eleven earthen houses which formed this community. I was the eleventh of thirteen children. Saygr is an area virtually devoid of colour. In the winter you can see the sludge and the sky. In the summer you can see the warm of the empty barren earth, and the open sky. In autumn you can see the yellow wheat and the cloudy sky. And in the Spring, for only three months, the earth is covered in green wheat shoots, tinged with yellow flowering weeds and the vivid movement of wild flowers.


‘Memory,’ excerpt from Fassih Keiso’s 1998 dissertation Multicultural Media.