Jasleen Kaur grew up in Pollokshields, not far from the venue where her new solo show, Alter Altar, has just opened. ‘When I was invited to have a show at Tramway, the local geography is what came to my mind first,’ says Kaur. ‘I was born a few blocks away and it’s where my mum and granny still live, down the road from Kenmure Street, the site of community resistance against the deportation of two Sikh men in 2021. Next door is the newly built gurdwara, a place of communal worship that was also a site of political education for me growing up.’

Kaur’s work shifts between filmmaking, writing and installation, often using objects and motifs whose domestic familiarity alludes to a shared Sikh-Muslim heritage. Through effects of scale, shape and texture, the London-based artist presents these materials in new contexts and formats that are both playful and subtly disorientating. For her 2018 show, I Keep Telling Them These Stories, at Glasgow’s Market Gallery, Kaur suspended a giant cotton shirt (or kurta) from the top of the gallery walls, draping it across its floor. A line of glazed terracotta flowerpots, each in the shape of a sandalled foot, beat a mysterious path along the surface.

Kaur’s exhibition at Tramway will incorporate kinetic and musical sculptures that remix the soundscapes and visual identity of the local area. Axminster carpets, bottles of ‘blessed Irn-Bru’, football scarves, and family photographs are among the items reworked to suggest new possibilities of cultural identity. The show will also feature a large-scale hanging suggesting a cloudy sky or heavens, and a car draped in an oversized doily, an expression of ‘migrant desires’. ‘In this show I am having a conversation with personal histories,’ explains Kaur, ‘exploring improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths.’ 

Alter Altar will show at Tramway, Glasgow, until Sunday 8 October.