Leila O. Leila
2012
Ink on Vinyl

20″ x 96″

This series of digital drawings examine the specificities of global travel for immigrants and tourists, and the surreal day- to-day experiences of trans-cultural women. I am interested in the airport as a place that symbolizes personal metamorphosis, and which simultaneously contrasts and conflicts with the realities of mass tourism, immigration, border controls and security. In “Leila O. Leila,” I have developed a storyboard narrative based on vintage Bollywood representations of the gangster moll. She is usually a glamorous westernized vamp, who participates in criminal heists and then dies a gruesome death. My composite character’s story is set at the Bombay airport, and it is loosely connected to a historical event at this airport involving the first female plane hijacker, Leila Khaled, of the PFLP. Fact and fiction collide to allow for various interpretations of this character’s story.