\n<\/p>\n
\u2018M<\/span>aria was actually due to give birth on that boat,\u201d says Aisha Mirza with a half sigh, half laugh. \u201cWe were all excited, but she ended up starting labour early and having the baby in the hospital. Then she brought the baby to the boat and I got to photograph their first few days together. That was really special.\u201d<\/p>\n Mirza, an artist and writer, is speaking via Zoom, sitting outside on a bench on a sunny autumn day talking me through some of the photographs in their new exhibition and smiling. WWWADING, is a five-year culmination of photography and oral history collected along the canals of London with a focus on boaters of colour. Inspired by the idea of what they call \u201ca marginalised people choosing a marginalised way of life\u201d, the photographs are an ode to a community of queer or disabled boaters in their natural habitat, who don\u2019t often have a lens on their existence.<\/p>\n <\/span>A tender moment of communion \u2026 a boater doing someone\u2019s hair. <\/span> Photograph: Aisha Mirza<\/p>\n Mirza is half Pakistani and Egyptian (and a boater) and talks about how water is a part of her present and her ancestral history. \u201cOne of the things that unites a lot of black and brown people is that we have movement in our lineages. Whether that\u2019s violent displacement, migration, economic movement, we\u2019ve all sailed on seas to get here and end up on this strange land. So it felt obvious that communities of colour occupying these spaces would be explored.\u201d<\/p>\n Mirza started asking boaters unusual questions. How has water shown up in the history of your family? How do boats inform how you live now? \u201cOne person I was interviewing was like: \u2018Well, the British build canals. That\u2019s what they do.\u2019\u201d The idea of colonial capitalism carved into the earth via watery networks gives the work a critical edge. \u201cIt\u2019s considered an incredible feat of engineering despite facilitating colonialism and control through commerce and capitalism. Large areas of marshland were destroyed to build these and land never recovers.\u201d<\/p>\n The name WWWADING elicits ideas of watery struggle and the web, which puts us in a modern world, despite our desire to escape it at times. Mirza describes wanting to be as close to off-grid living as you can in a city. \u201cWhen I first moved on to a boat, I was saying I was off grid as a joke until I realised that people living on boats in London are for the most part not tapped into any of the main grid systems. For constant cruisers, like me, who move my boat every two weeks, we\u2019re managing our own water, we\u2019re creating our own electricity, using solar power and gas from bottles. It\u2019s quite hardcore.\u201d<\/p>\n The pictures speak to how people are using home-making as an act of resistance against the high costs of London living. From the inclusion of mobility scooters on boats to signs declaring \u201cTHE TRUTH IS IN THE SOIL\u201d (\u201cI heard there\u2019s one that says Compost The Rich, but I couldn\u2019t find it\u201d) or display pieces of Indian and Pakistani flags kissing.<\/p>\n One photograph captures a boater on a towpath doing someone\u2019s hair in a tender show of communion; another is of a boater, Esme, eating a Pot Noodle. \u201cShe makes ceramics using clay foraged from the towpath,\u201d says Mirza. \u201cShe has this tiny boat and she has an enormous dog on it. It\u2019s as big as her.\u201d There\u2019s humour in the shots too. \u201cThere\u2019s two swans who\u2019ve swum up to my front door \u2013 and you can see an Amazon box.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Her dog is as big as she is\u2019 \u2026 Esme and her four-legged friend.<\/span> Photograph: Aisha Mirza<\/p>\n One photograph captures a person in a \u201cBoaters Fightback\u201d T-shirt, referencing a growing movement to resist the government\u2019s support of privatisation of land around the waterways. \u201cThe canals used to be a place of working-class labour, but now they\u2019re a place of waterfront views and million-pound flats,\u201d sighs Mirza. \u201cResidents overlooking the beautiful waterways of London don\u2019t necessarily want to see poor people living in boats.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Mirza\u2019s photographs capture the neighbourliness of boaters. We talk about a picture they took of their ex-wife in a bath despite a bath being almost impossible to install. \u201cThe hardest thing for me about living on a boat is not having a bath. I\u2019m a water baby, but I live on a boat on water as polluted as the London waters are so I can\u2019t swim!\u201d<\/p>\n We discuss this conflict that governs so much of our lives: choosing to live in a city that is not always great for our health, and maybe being a constant cruiser makes that easier to manage. We\u2019re silent for a moment thinking of how we all navigate political, social, cultural pollution \u2013 and suddenly Mirza smiles and we discuss the bath picture and how people create glimmers of sun for themselves. \u201cShe just looks so beautiful with her gaze and being really present,\u201d they say happily. \u201cFor a moment, you forget the capitalist real estate treadmill \u2013 and you\u2019re given these moments. That\u2019s what I\u2019m living for.\u201d<\/p>\n WWWADING is at the Floating Garden, London, 9-15 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Maria was actually due to give birth on that boat,\u201d says Aisha Mirza with a half sigh, half laugh. \u201cWe were all excited, but she ended up starting labour early and having the baby in the hospital. Then she brought the baby to the boat and I got to photograph their first few days together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[15882,15885,6021,15883,15884,14584,6429,3693,4605,14302,15881],"class_list":{"0":"post-26434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-bath","9":"tag-celebrated","10":"tag-delivery","11":"tag-hardcore","12":"tag-houseboaters","13":"tag-millionaire","14":"tag-neighbours","15":"tag-photography","16":"tag-photos","17":"tag-swans","18":"tag-wonders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}