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@rjaaing

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very nice, smart, and mentally stable

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I can’t quite express the ways in which Dolly touched me. Perhaps what I appreciated most about Dolly was how she satirized her “shortcomings” and turned them into a costume before others could make fun of her. She wasn’t insecure of her femininity. She wasn’t ashamed of her trashy upbringing. Instead of running away from what made others belittle her, she beat them to the punch. She made herself the caricature. She told the joke first.

In a society hellbent on making women feel small and insignificant, she was unapologetically larger than life.

Dolly took everything the world told her she should be ashamed of, doused it in rhinestones and made it her armour. Rest in pink glitter, Dolly. ❤️🎀 by @rjaaing

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2 months ago

A cascading script that flows from left to right, where character design, placement and slope are entirely context-driven…What better way to resist Western colonial, utilitarian standards for language use?

The Roman script symbolizes structure, order, straight lines, and prioritises utility above all else. Nastaliq, on the other hand, is fluid. Dynamic. Intentional. Divergent, but never chaotic.

Historically, Nastaliq has been an act of rebellion, both against the strict linguistic standards imposed by British colonization in South Asia but also as a way to advance a cultural identity separate from the Arabic world by setting Urdu and Persian apart from standard Arabic script.

It isn’t just a script. It’s a tool of resistance against the Western colonial need for standardization, order and utility, where typography itself becomes a tool of dissent.

Looking forward to hopefully dive deep into archival folios, poems and manuscripts that employ Nastaliq calligraphy to continue documenting its history and evolution! And, let this be your sign to ditch college ruled notebooks and use blank papers instead. :) #nastaliq #calligraphy #urdu by @rjaaing

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4 months ago

Trying to practice more "just put it out there" energy instead of obsessing over tiny nits and imperfections…

I recently fell into a gold-mine of architectural drafts and under-drawings. While some are attributed to artists like Jules Lachaise, an interior designer for the French Artistocracy, and Leonardo Marini, an Italian designer who specialized in Rococo style, most of these are anonymous.

This led me down another rabbit hole: who gets attributed, who is relegated to footnotes, and who remains faceless and nameless? But, only one rabbit hole is enough for this post. :)

Comment “cosmos” and I’ll send you a link to a board with all the drawings I used as backgrounds, plus other open access manuscripts and ornaments I stitched with my digital illustration.

As always, no AI used in any part of the process, whatsoever. Please don’t feed into AI models or LLM’s or else I will cry and curse you through Black magic. by @rjaaing

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4 months ago

What stories are worth telling? Which histories are worth preserving? Who decides this?

What about a fire at Notre Dame De Cathedral triggers international outcry while no one bats an eye at the damage done to cultural heritage sites memorializing one of the world’s oldest civilizations? Worse yet, why is the loss of human lives in West Asia barely a blip on the Global North’s moral compass that is so quick to mobilize elsewhere?

I’ve been mourning the loss of life. The loss of history as it gets destroyed, bombed, rewritten and sanitized. The loss of the stories we’ll never get to hear. And I’m mourning the hypocrisy of the world as it stands by.

Some histories are treated as sacred. Some tragedies command the world’s attention. And some lives are grieved loudly, collectively, and without hesitation. Others get bombed into oblivion and nobody bats an eye.

Brown lives are disposable—this lesson has been imprinted on my brain so many times that it has started to burn holes in it now.

I collected some art and ephemera over the past few weeks to seek refuge in—to remind myself that our stories have and always will endure. All art and text has been appropriately licensed and the corresponding illustrations were done by me. As always, no AI was used in any part of my artistic or creative process. Please don’t use it to train any algorithms. by @rjaaing

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7 months ago

Emotions and their expression is deeply political. Why do we expect some people to behave a particular way? I set out to investigate the way gender norms and racial hierarchies shape the way we perceive emotional expression, focusing specifically on anger. Forever grateful for the wisdom of Audre Lorde and Myisha Cherry’s apt analysis of rage as a political tool—here I share some of my key takeaways.

Some time ago, I said I don’t really care for Veteran’s Day in front of some acquaintances. Not that I hate it. Not wishing ill on any veterans. Simply expressing apathy. Everyone was aghast. I asked myself, “Did I say the quiet part out loud again?”

What followed was a sermon on the importance of their service and their bravery. I thought of 14 year old me who would feel “grateful” when only 60 people died in a drone attack, instead of the 100+ casualties I was used to hearing about in the news. I thought of the 4 months I spent cooped up at home after our school shuttered at the height of the spring term in 2015, following the horrific APS attack on 16 December, 2014. Somehow, I am still expected to be poised, graceful and eloquent while those memories knaw at my insides. Even indifference is too negative of an emotion for the White American liberal who wants me to hold space for their brave and courageous kinfolk who serve American imperialism while not extending an ounce of that same grace to me. I’m not allowed to be indifferent, let alone angry. They perceive my apathy as a personal attack, not allowing me the duality of being empathetic to those victimised by the imperial core despite serving it, while also being angry at a the injustice of being swept up in a war that was never ours to fight. by @rjaaing

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8 months ago

The politics of rage have always fascinated me.

Femininity in South Asian culture is almost synonymous with sacrifice. Even the weakest attempt at self-assertion by women is deemed a threat for a society that thrives on women's unpaid labor.

Western feminist spaces are often equally alienating.

Non-White women are palatable only when they shrink their selfhood to perform victimhood and gratitude, appeasing the savior complex so often espoused by White progressives. The moment your voice rises above their performative allyship, you are no longer the “good” victim they pedestalize but a threat to the moral authority they’ve built by speaking over us—diluting our stories so they can dick-ride one another for being the best white person in the room.

Non-White women are celebrated only under very tight conditions: legible pain described in the colonizer’s language, contained anger only directed at the 'bad and violent' brown men instead of at white supremacy, and gratitude toward those who “gave” us the microphone. The moment our rage becomes self-authored rather than curated for white consumption, it gets reclassified as danger. Not because it’s incoherent—but because it’s coherent without them. Our rage isn’t dangerous or excessive. It’s diagnostic. It names the limits of liberal empathy and exposes how conditional humanity really is.

Take this as your sign to pop off more often.

Translations for the words on slide 2: thin-skinned, out of control, crazy, insolent, arrogant, sly, self-obsessed by @rjaaing

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9 months ago

where is papa going with that axe??? by @rjaaing

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9 months ago

Even more unsettling than the recent wave of political violence is the sheer cowardice I witness from those who would be least at risk if they speak out. The rights some of us never had in the first place are being snatched away and the most some of you can muster is hushed whispers of allyship.

I'm reminded of these words by Qabil Ajmeri, an Urdu poet writing in post-partition Pakistan while battling chronic illness.

Art 🎨 @rjaaing
Translation 🖌 @dure__a by @rjaaing

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9 months ago

In 2011, the U.S. faked a vaccine drive in Abbottabad, Pakistan to collect DNA samples in its hunt for Osama bin Laden.

This incident, which remains underreported and underinvestigated, undermined trust in public health not just in Pakistan but globally. The expanding measles outbreak in the U.S. got me thinking about how the seeds of distrust that imperialism sowed elsewhere in the world are now spreading to the source. Despite the lies and propaganda surrounding vaccines, we got vaccinated in Pakistan every time health care workers knocked on our doors.

The irony that the group that has historically been the aggressor, benefitting the most from scientific and systemic bias, is now at the forefront of vaccine denial is not lost on me. Please get vaccinated and boosted. Doing so is an act of resistance against imperialist propaganda. by @rjaaing

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9 months ago

I started this account 4 years ago to sell food and it then evolved into my main account and now it is evolving again. I’ll be using this as a digital scrapbook from now on—an outlet for my art and my thoughts and my feelings. Of course my first post references Octavia Butler and Sylvia Plath.

My brain is full of nonsense.

Some of it is Pakistani history where we were forced to learn the "benefits" of British colonization and then when we lived like characters in a comically inaccurate history book where Osama bin Laden was executed in our backyard while our President flirted with Sarah Palin at the U.N. General Assembly.

Some of it is old Urdu ads hawking mercury-laced whitening creams and balms for cracked heels so the boys at college stare in admiration instead of disgust. And chocolate as a cure for female rage.

Some of it is the farce of the American Dream. Some of it is Tiffany Pollard and Tyra Banks and Rupaul’s Drag Race and other early 2000’s reality T.V. rot.

But all of my brain’s nonsense is valid and beautiful. I ask myself, “What if I forget?” What if I forget my Urdunglish slang and the tragic hilarity of growing up in Pakistan and then coming of age in Trump’s America?

Even more harrowing is the thought of forgetting how to make art in a world ravaged by AI and inauthenticity. Therefore, I’m challenging myself to be creative. Thoughtful. Intentional. Imperfect.

[All illustrations are painstakingly done by hand in Procreate/Illustrator, and all the backgrounds and archival texts I’ll use have been appropriately licensed. No generative artificial intelligence, will ever be used at any point of my creative process. Please do not use to “train” AI technologies.] by @rjaaing

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10 months ago

This post is entirely inspired by me stumbling over the Tumblr blog I had in high school. The blog I made to cope with the hellhole that was Faisalabad.

It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh at how naive I was and how small my problems were. I laugh at my innocence. I laugh at how I conceptualised everything with myself at the center. I also admire my courage. I admire my scathing honesty.

I have not been okay. I have been struggling to wrap my head around the atrocities happening in the places where I’m from. The murder in the quiet and serene Shahzad Town in Chak Shehzad, Islamabad where I lived for over 4 years. The abduction case in Faisalabad. The daily suffering of women and everyone turning a blind eye. I feel powerless. I wonder how do I even begin dismantling this system.

And I think, what will sixteen year old Rjaa think of me. The sixteen year old Rjaa who would say shit like it was. I feel like I’m not doing enough to call it out. Why am I still so tired? Why is my throat burning as if I’ve been screaming all my life?

So I asked my sister. And she told me that the places I inhabited before aren’t necessarily the places I’m “from.” That I can nudge change without wallowing in self-pity when I think of the places that I’m “from.” taken in Faisalabad فیصل آباد by @rjaaing

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4 years ago

(Biryani pic for attention, this is NOT what I look like 🤪)

IM BACK!! Last summer some hateful loser reported me to L&I so my entrepreneurial dreams came crashing down.
Now I’m BACK 🤪 but I won’t be selling anything...just sharing the food I cook and living my best life eating around Philly. Maybe I’ll open a restaurant and get the appropriate licensing if I get rich and famous in a few years but for now, it’s just me, recipes and food pics 🔥

Now to the person who reported me to the cops: I’m a nice person and a libra so I forgive u. I truly empathize with you 😔Jealousy is a disease and it’s not your fault that your dad is a ho and your mom left u and you’re ugly, talentless, insecure and full of hate. Imagine feeling threatened by someone just trying to make food...I hope you find happiness and better use of your time than beefing with 21 year olds on the internet. Don’t get bitter, just get better ❤️❤️❤️🌈✨🙏

TL;DR pls don’t report me I’m not selling anything
📸: @laviedevy

FOR LEGAL REASONS THIS POST IS A JOKE 💛

#youcantelljesusthatthebitchisback #freekashmir #defundthepolice by @rjaaing

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5 years ago