Nadia Haji Omar was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1985 and lives and works in Warren, Rhode Island. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Bard College in 2007 and a MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2014. Nadia has had solo exhibitions at Providence College Galleries, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Kristen Lorello, and Bard College, among other venues, and has been included in group exhibitions at The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster, NJ, the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY, Bronx Art Space, and Deli Gallery, among other venues. Her works are included in the collections of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI, Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO, Providence College Galleries and Collections, Providence, RI, Capital Group, Los Angeles, CA, and Art in Embassies, U.S. Department of State, Permanent Collection, U.S. Embassy, Colombo, Sri Lanka, among others. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in Hyperallergic and New York Magazine, among other publications.

Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet and collage artist of Hakka Chinese dissent. Recent publications include the chapbook, Evolution of the Bullet (2023), co-written with Vi Khi Nao, Playdate (2022), and The Joy and Terror are Both in the Swallowing (2021). Their artwork has been exhibited at White Columns and Deli Gallery in New York City.

DEAR SO AND SO,

You could say that our fates are

inextricably linked to one another.

That in the end, we are soft infections born

from significant loss and widened eyes.

Listen, I am at my quietest

when I am aroused.

Lately I have become more verve

and less nerve in the thriving.

Artist Reflection

There are multiple intentions going into this collaboration. Nadia’s intention was to combine written elements, specifically asemic writing, with abstract drawing/painting. Nadia’s process was firstly to draw or paint the written elements and then build the framework for the rest of the piece. The various elements of the drawing/painting are created in response to the initial writing cluster. The asemic writing thus becomes the central focus of the piece; the main character around which foreground, background, and pattern are developed and manipulated. 

These three pieces are part of a much larger exploration of the concepts of asemic writing and how it relates to painting and drawing. Here, asemic writing is blended with various different media: graphite, ink, dye, acrylic paint, and natural gemstones. Regardless of the tools and materials used to develop the writing element or its surroundings, the impact or effect is the same: the human eye will always discern, distinguish, and isolate any text or text-like imagery first, acknowledging the innate power of language. Christine has felt an aesthetic kinship with Nadia’s visual language and wanted to respond to the drawings and painting by writing a poem from inside, or while psychically inhabiting the drawing. 

We addressed/explored the concept of hybridity from a couple of perspectives. In one sense, hybridity is two consecutive actions—call and response. Nadia’s artwork came first and the poems were written second, with no alteration or adjustment to the artwork after the writing of the poems.

In addition to this relatively straightforward approach, we also interpreted hybridity as a form of friendship. The collaborative process consisted of talking, listening, and exchanging ideas—what we have been reading, thinking about, looking at, and how we have been nourishing our minds and taking in the world. So on one hand while hybridity can be interpreted as a simple call and response, it is also something that is less perfunctory—an invisible fusion, a deep interconnection of two varied and distinct artistic minds.