Archives of Identity: Past and Present

Workshops

As part of the project Archives of Identity: Past and Present, I am hosting a series of workshops in Hamburg. The workshops explore memory, migration, and belonging through photographs, personal materials, drawing, writing, and conversation.

Participants are welcome to bring a photograph, letter, document, object, or another personal item connected to memory, migration, identity, or family history, although this is entirely optional. No artistic or technical experience is required. The workshops are especially open to people with migration experiences and migrant family histories in Hamburg.

Alongside working with memories and personal histories, participants will also be invited to think about what could become an archive of the present. Through photographs, drawings, writing, short videos, audio, or other forms of personal documentation.

Depending on the interests of the participants, there will also be opportunities to experiment with analog photography, film, and sound recording. Material created through these processes is intended to become part of the project, with participants' consent agreed beforehand.

The workshop will be held in english, and is especially open to people with migration experiences and migrant family histories in Hamburg. Everyone is welcome, and no artistic or technical experience is required.

Dates and Timings:
22.08.2026 • 10:00-13:00
28.08.2026 • 16:00-19:00
12.09.2026 • 14:00-17:00
18.09.2026 • 16:00-19:00

Location
Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg e.V.
fux - eg,
Bodenstedtstraße 16,
22765 Hamburg

Free participation - Limited places

Archives of Identity: Past and Present is a visual and currently a research based artistic project that explores collective memory through family stories, colonial archives, oral history, and present-day materials. It focuses on what is missing, what is difficult to access, and what has been carried across generations and borders. The project connects migration histories between India, Pakistan, and Germany through photographs, archives, and new visual research.

This project continues the questions I began exploring in earlier works such as Ingredients of Identity and Layers of Identity, where I worked with family memory, migration, food, photographs, and archival footage. In this project, I am expanding that research through family and institutional archives, analogue photo and video works, new visual material, and workshops in Hamburg. By bringing personal histories together with wider migration histories, the project looks at how identity is remembered, documented, lost, and reshaped over time.

Workshops in Hamburg form an important part of this process, creating space for exchange with people from different backgrounds.

The research, development, and workshops for this project are funded by the Interkulturelle Projektförderung of the Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg.