For June's Digbeth First Friday, we are delighted to present the first public performance by Saheli - the queer, women-led collective at the heart of Seema Mattu's project LOCAL SUPERSTAR.
Saheli is Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay, Mani JNX, Ushara Dilrukshan, Zahrah Hutton and Seema Mattu — five musicians from Birmingham and London who came together following an open call for musically-minded South Asian people interested in creating music that challenges misogyny, casteism, colourism, and queer erasure within South Asian musical expression.
Formed in early 2026, over the last five months the collective has been meeting regularly at Grosvenor Road Studios in Handsworth, developing a body of work rooted in a DIY, folk-punk ethos. This performance marks the first occasion on which they will share that work publicly.
Everyone is welcome to join them for an evening of work in progress, sonic expression, and collective experimentation, set within the exhibition space, c'mon in!
Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay is a Bengali poet, musician, and anthropologist, and the author of the books this is our war and everything is always leaving and poetry album i don’t know anyone here (2020). She was the first Nashville Youth Poet Laureate, finalist for the first National Youth Poet Laureate, and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her book Towards a Poetic Memory of Bengal Partition was published with Natyachinta in December 2023. With a Masters in Migration and Diaspora from SOAS and Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, you can find her work in Poetry Society of America, Tagvverk, and Anthropocene, among others. Lagnajita has been writing songs from the age of ten and has participated in multiple recording projects of both music and poetry. She was the poet and bassist in the band JAWARI, whose debut album ROAD RASA propelled them to the Paris Olympics and SXSW, and also runs a collective called 'Place to Scream' which includes musical collaboration, written word, as well as podcasting. She is interested in many kinds of music and has worked extensively in jazz, punk and folk music in Western traditions, as well as having some vocal training in Indian and Western classical. She joined Saheli because she has never experienced an anti-colonial collective like it and hopes to create a space like it for others. Find out more on her Website / InstagramMANI JNX is a British-Punjabi DIY musician based in Birmingham who focuses on fusing electronic or digital sound with real-world instrumentation to create unique & intentional soundscapes, layered under lyrics that tell stories of all facets of human experience, including those considered off-limits or taboo. Her culture and religion as a Punjabi Sikh woman are core to her music, which has a purpose to destigmatise conversations around mental health and queerness, both within her community & beyond, and so aligned with Saheli’s mission. Find out more on her InstagramUshara Dilrukshan is a Sri Lankan multimedia performance artist, soprano, cellist, DJ, and composer, currently based in London. Her work explores cultural identity, womanhood and trauma explored through narratives, in formats such as mutated operatics, sonic theatre, installation, and performance. Ushara has performed at Eavesdropping Forum, the Independent Liverpool Art Biennal, London Design Week, The Place, and Cafe Oto amongst other venues across Europe; she was a composer on Sound and Music’s 2025 In Motion programme, and is an Artist in Residence with Brompton Cemetery with Sonnie Carlebach across 2024-26. Ushara is part of experimental noise duo Cell Deletion, expanding on the narratives she utilises in her solo work through live coding and analogue tape loops to manipulate live instrumentation and vocalisations. She saw Saheli as a powerful opportunity to come together with others, in a shared structure with the potential to hold space and speak with sound about collective experience as diaspora in England. Find out more on her Website / InstagramZahrah Hutton is a British-Pakistani guitarist, artist, and composer from London, based in Birmingham. In both her compositional and visual practices, her work explores repetition and balance within structures, the arrangement of forms, and the relationship between form and sound. From August 2024 to January 2025, she was an Artist in Residence at Stirchley Printworks, a contemporary print studio in South Birmingham. As a member of the Mela Guitar Quartet, Zahrah has performed in America, Canada, Norway, and across the UK including live on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune, and released an album of original arrangements, ‘Overtures & Dances’, with contemporary classical label TRPTK. She plays electric guitar, keyboards, and objects with DIY collective Body Loud, and performs and improvises on acoustic guitar, lute, and banjo with community theatre company A Book of Portraits. Zahrah is a Britten Pears Young Artist 2025-26, for Composition, Alternative Performance, and Performance Art. She joined Saheli to work with other South Asian artists and develop stronger connections to the music, art, and culture of her heritage. Find out more on her Website/ Instagram
