An exhibition of dreams at the Peacock Gallery, Auburn, 2013

Siyah mashq calligraphy on pigment prints

I had a dream about a local man. I don't know who he is, but I've seen him around. He was hunting me down. 

I was in and out of worlds, different countries. It was like The Bourne Identity, when he gets hunted from country to country. I was in different parts of Auburn, but in different worlds. 

So for example I know I'm in Turkey in my dream, but it looks like this local shop in Auburn. Or some African country,  but it looks like the Duck River. Do you know where the Duck River is? And do you know there's a small park, and right behind that small park there's a small bunch of trees and you can't actually see the river until you get close? Near Mona street. So it's there, and I think it's Africa. There's Lebanon too, but I’m not sure where. It's the same person chasing me, and my staff are all supporting him. I go to them for help, but I get locked in a cupboard. Then they tell him “She's in here”.

I don't know, I think maybe I'm at a point in my life where everybody around me – family, friends, workmates – wants something from me, but they don't always care how I am.

When I was in the detention centre, I dreamt suddenly I was in Golshahr. 

Golshahr means flower-city, it's a place in Tehran. I was there in the centre of the town, but I was really worried, because I thought “How did I get here?”. I didn't have any passport, or documents, or anything to get me back into Australia. I went through a lot of hardship and difficulty to get to Australia, especially the journey from Indonesia. So I should have been happy, because I was in Golshahr to visit my family, but I wasn't. There's a big roundabout in the middle of Golshahr, and I just remember standing in the middle of the roundabout and thinking about how I got there, and how I could get back. 

At that time, some people from the camp had been deported back to Afghanistan. So it's natural for people to worry about that kind of thing, every night, every day. I woke up and my body was wet with sweat, but I was very happy because I saw I was in my bed, on the top of the bunk in the camp. 

I was flying on an umbrella. I started from my house, in Auburn. It's an umbrella that we own, but it's broken now. It's red. The top of it looks a bit like a bottle. I was really trying to control it, because it was going crazy. I had to move my whole body. It was nearly falling. You know like when you go on rides, a feeling like that? I landed with a thud, back at my house again.

I was quite young, maybe fifteen or sixteen. I'd be in a group of people, like a sit-down around a space, and everybody would be talking. There would be tables with coffees and sweets on them.

And this is my vivid memory – I get up, I don't talk to anybody, and I literally stand in the centre of the space. Like taking centre stage. I want to be seen. I only see only my body, never my head, and never below my knees. And I'm literally forcing my skin off my body. I don't cut it. It's my flesh, that's all you can see. You can't see the details of a curve or... anything. I'm just there, taking off my skin in front of all these people, who are oblivious to me being there. 

I don't know, I always felt like I wanted to expose who I really was to people. Or I hated who I was, so I just wanted to take off this skin. So I want to get attention, and everybody's there just having tea.