About
Sarafina
van Ast
Because of their practice as a poet the following biography is in a different format than usual:
“As child, I was raised within two different cultures,
the Surinamese one
and the Dutch one.
This has made me more aware of the other,
how they are perceived,
and how they are listened to.
Within my own religion,
which is Islam,
I experience this same otherness towards many things,
but what most interests me is the difference
between the perceived and constructed
feminine and masculine.
Through my poetry and performances,
I seek to uncover other forms of otherness.
The fact that
I
do not identify with feminine or masculine words.
Yet the pitch and tone of masculine and feminine voices
is something that returns ever into my practice.
Together with text and audio,
I create performances and installations
where the audience are invited to inhabit a story,
of or as the other.”