The Bacha Posh Project, 2016/2021
12 prints on archival boxes, each 20.4 x 25.4 x 3 cm; 2 canvases, each 100 x 180 cm, with green-screen fabric; 2 translucent glass plates with photographs, each 60 x 40 cm; glass plates; dimensions variable
“Bacha posh” is the English transliteration of a Dari term referring to a cultural practice in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan whereby some families that have no sons pick a daughter to live and behave as a boy—thus enabling the child to attend school, to walk alone in public, and to generally live more freely. The custom has been documented for at least a century, but is likely much older than that and is still practiced today. The Bacha Posh Project (2016/2021) arises out of Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s investigation into different forms of queerness, in different times, in different spaces, and with different social functions attached to them. With this work—anchored in a space between history and the present, fiction and investigation—the artist* proposes a rethinking of the present-day status of queerness from the perspective of social survival, expanded potential, and cultural proximities beyond geopolitical separations.
The following “Bacha Texts” are experiments of such writings of history and fiction, written by the artist* herself*.
Text by Anne Faucheret