Borrowed Time: Urdu, Memory, and the Lives We Build
Saturday, May 16, 2026
7:00- 9:30 pm
Wajiha Ibrahim brings Words in Urdu to the South Asia Institute for an evening of poetry, art, and collective reflection set within the gallery exhibition space. Surrounded by modern and contemporary South Asian works, the program centers on Borrowed Time, exploring how time shapes memory, identity, and the lives we build across the diaspora. Drawing on Urdu literature and oral storytelling, the evening unfolds through a live poetry performance, guided reflections on the language within each artwork, and a hands-on activity, inviting audiences into a shared experience of Urdu as something lived and felt. Designed as an intimate, immersive gathering, the program bridges literature, visual culture, and the passage of time
Gallery
Wajiha Ibrahim is the co-founder of Words in Urdu, an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to preserving Urdu language, literature, and cultural thought for diaspora and non-native audiences. Based in Los Angeles, her work moves across language, architecture, and photography to reconnect communities with their intellectual and cultural inheritances. She challenges the idea that knowledge flows only from West to East, instead exploring what diasporic life can relearn from South Asian traditions of storytelling, community, and resistance. Her interdisciplinary practice asks how language, image, and space can help communities reclaim ways of seeing and imagining themselves beyond colonial frameworks.