Azadi | 2020


Azadi is one of 80 sky-written compositions by artists as part of In Plain Sight, a coalition of artists standing against immigrant detention and the culture of incarceration conceived by Cassils and rafa esparza. Haq chose to invoke this word which means freedom in Urdu, Farsi, Hindi, Kurdish, Pashto, Azeri, Balochi, Armenian, Kurdish, Punjabi, Bengali, and Kashmiri, amongst others. Using this word evokes a transnational understanding and solidarity around the struggle for liberation, and invites the subversion of writing freedom in a foreign and often-feared script across the sky.

Azadi appeared in the sky above Orange County Intake and Release Center on July 3, 2020.