Niam Madlani: Othered Dreams

‘Othered Dreams’ is a collection of short, anecdotal writings that attempt to offer a space for incongruence. This booklet has served as a trace of a larger project and installation, which has hosted a series of collective readings in London and Amsterdam within queer South Asian spaces. Through intimate reflections on language, gender, and displacement, the collection explores how the most private experiences or feelings can also be the most universally shared. Despite focusing on excavating my own sense of belonging and identity, my work has always required the incorporation of other voices.

Many of these writings were composed between meetings, at bus stops, or in airports — with my body, or the encasing vehicles, in transit. The prose seeks to find a balance between the discomfort of opposing forces. Through poetry, recollection, and disfluency, this collection attempts to unravel the threads of its imposed structures.