Letters to Taseer

Its been a year since Salman Taseer was shot dead by his own bodyguard for reasons that we are all familiar with. As much as I would like to believe that his death wasn’t in vain, his first death anniversary this month was a reminder that nothing has changed, that we live under constant threat to be falsely implicated for raising a voice or perhaps having an opinion alone is enough to get one killed. Letters to Taseer, a two part exhibition at Drawing room Gallery, the first of which opened on 5^th of January, is an exhibition dedicated to honoring the memory of this man whose courage to speak, earned him 26 bullets. Or perhaps the show testifies that this fearlessness is not buried with him, instead it has inspired many others to have the courage of their convictions. Perhaps a gift, intended to show respect and admiration, or may be a celebration of the life he lived.

Seven artists; Faiza Butt, Imran Mudasser, Mohammad Ali Talpur, Noor Ali Chagani, Quddus Mirza, Rashid Rana and Saba Khan have been selected from a pool of participating artists, for the first part of the exhibition, curated by Salima Hashmi. The political dialogue that the work generates, is part of each one of these artists’ respective practice.

My experience of witnessing these works at the gallery, can not be dissociated from the dialogue that I had with my seven year old nephew, Naail, about the works, as he was accompanying me at the show. His display of curiosity about every single work, long attention span, active engagement, the desire to meet the artists and ask them questions to satisfy his need to know and his confidence in looking and talking about what he saw (especially for a kid who didn’t grow up going to art museums and galleries, in fact if I’m not wrong this may be his first encounter) made it a very unique experience for me. Perhaps all children have a native interest in art, all they need is a little bit encouragement and help to enjoy it.

It wasn’t anything unique particularly, but it was unique for me, I was amazed at his display of such a 

Butt’s collage, titled Zaever Zangeer, is a collage/photomontage of various items; such as; jewellery, bones, plastic bags, cigarette butts and e.t.c, to give shape to the words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem ‘aaj bazaar main pa bajolan chalo…’ (let us walk in bazaar in shackles), lettered onto the light-box, imitating the poem’s language of symbols, references, metaphors and similes. Naail was fascinated by the technique and so was I, he enjoyed the imagery, the apt choice of items for lettering certain words in the poem and most of all the element of discovery. But on a closer introspection of the work, he concluded that, “I don’t like the words in it, like blood stains and head covered with ashes”.  Perhaps the violence upset him and that’s exactly what it was meant to be, a sign of defiance. Using Faiz’s poetry in art these days is a common sight, particularly because his verses are shockingly relevant to this time and age. It’s a difficult task to balance ingredients such as extremely powerful verses and an empowering context, for a work to be informed by them yet do something more.

Faiza Butt

Zaever Zangeer

6 x 77 x 30 Inches

Dura trans-print mounted on light box

Edition of 2/3

 2011

Mudasser’s black heart and moths, enclosed in a pencil-drawn illumination, lies somewhere between irony and devotion. Talpur’s mashq is a simple (yet beautiful) calligraphy exercise that is done with kalam and ink. The work is an endless exercise into deconstructing the meaning of the word itself and a form of devotion, disciplining and meditation. The patterns formed with varying densities of ink, gives the illusion of 3-dimetionality and movement, touching on memory, time and repetition.

Imran Mudassar

Untitled

Pencil and poster paint on paper

2011

Mohammad Ali Talpur

Mashq

Ink on paper

2011

Chagani’s tiny replicas of terracotta bricks, in the form of a wall and a cubical structure, titled Silence and Frozen, dropped Naail’s jaw. Also it was easy for him to interpret what the wall may signify. “Walls are to separate one area from another – to create boundaries – to hold someone back, e.t.c - or may be it is to do with all the good work he did for flood and earthquake victims, he built houses for them, you know!”, said Naail (he couldn't decide whether he needs to read them in the context of Taseer alone or whether he should look at the works for what they are, at times he could do both with the same work, which was pretty impressive). Perhaps it symbolizes the cold of silence and the finality of death, whilst commenting on the politics of labor, both literally and metaphorically.

Noor Ali Chagani

Frozen (left), 16 x 7.7 x 4.6 Inches

Silence (right), 13 x 21.5 x 2.5 Inches (including the base)

Terracotta Bricks, limestone, cement and concrete

2011

Mirza’s diptych, titled In Praise of Red, is literally a pool of blood, juxtaposed with a picture of a funeral, some broken Urdu letters, with both a subdued reference to bodies in the background and a rather direct image of a muscled human skeleton, possibly from a book of anatomy studies. A display of violence embedded in our everyday experience.

Quddus Mirza

In praise of red

72 x 96 Inches

Mix medium on board

2010 

This violence is also the subject of Rashid Rana’s photo-mosaic, which from a distance looks like a Persian rug, titled Red Carpet. The grid, on closer inspection, is actually an assemblage of images of slaughtered animals. This analogy adds an irony to the otherwise uninfluential imagery of slaughtering of humans that we see repetitively on television and have grown immune to. It is only when one steps back from those small images which are knitted together in the narrative that one can see, what Henry James calls, “the figure in the carpet”.

Rashid Rana

Red Carpet 1 (above)

detail (below)

95 x 135 Inches

C-print + Diasec

Edition of 5

2007 

Khan’s installation is perhaps the only work made particulary for the show. White mesh, white cotton drapes, threads and dust, titled Going Home, is a reminder that “Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return”.

Saba Khan

Going Home

72 x 48 x 84 Inches

Nylon mesh, cotton thread and dust

2012

LOC (Line of Control):

The story of the subcontinent’s Partition, is a subject commonly shared, across disciplines, by many artists, writers, film-makers, journalists and historians on both sides of the crooked line. The accounts of this imposed geographic division, after more than sixty years, still continues to hold a sense of immediacy. This very split that triggered sectarian hatred and bloodletting, causing profound physical, social and emotional scars, is also the subject of Pritika Chowdhry’s ‘Remembering the Crooked Line’ on display at Rohtas 2 art gallery, from January 2^nd to 14^th

Chowdhry is an Indian artist, curator, scholar, and educator who has lived in the US since 1999 and currently visiting Lahore for research on monuments and historical documents for, possibly, a continuation of her critical investigation of the politics of identity/ nation-building.

What is interesting is that much of this retelling of history of the Partition is done by people situated/schooled in the West, as argued by Dorothy Barenscott, in This is our Holocaust: Question of Partition Trauma. She writes that “the interest in witnessing, memory, trauma, subjectivity and history has come to characterize a new direction in Partition historiography, which has a direct and theoretically informed connection to the Holocaust; a distinctly western preoccupation”. How their diasporic status informs and shapes their work, on this subject, is worth investigating.

In any case, at the core of the subject is the analysis of storytelling and storymaking. Storytelling for survival perhaps, just like Scheherazade of Arabian Nights, to either prevent or allow the existence of a no man’s land, an ambiguous site, in-betweeness, a place of regenerative promise.

In an attempt to articulate this understanding of borders, Chowdhry’s work is an unavoidable situation of constructing, breaking down, reconstructing, telling and retelling the imaginary relationship between tangible and intangible or fact and fiction. She writes: “I think of maps as the skin of the nation. By extracting real and fictionalized cartographic fragments of the border lines of each of the above-mentioned countries (India, Palestine, Ireland, and Cyprus - former British colonies), and grafting them onto garments, board games, and kites, I attempt to give material form to the skin of the nation. While the physical human body is made elusive in this project, its absence is alluded to by several corporeal references. In each of these objects, the maps have been manifested on materials which have been manipulated to feel like skin. This installation is comprised of five parts. The first four consist of sculptural renditions of playing Ring-a-ring-a- roses, flying kites, playing a game of Parcheesi, and playing a game of chess. Each of these activities is played in the above-mentioned countries as per local customs. In this project, these games are cross-cultural motifs that highlight between these nations, and allow the viewer to engage with large transnational histories from a personal and individual location”. 

Pritika Chowdhry

Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses, part I

Tassar and raw silk, goddess hair, hand embroidered, wax.

Set of six vests (kurtis).

2009

Pritika Chowhdry

The Shadow Lines

Handmade flax and abaca paper, pig and cow guts, surgical suture, thread, wax, walnut ink.

Set of twelve kites.

2009

Lines of Control

Digital prints on Indian dupioni silk, conte crayons, marker pens, wood.

2009

Using a variety of mediums (such as; raw silk, hair, Khadi cotton, wire, wax, embroidery, surgical suture, thread, e.t.c) Chowdhry has utilized these objects (chess board, Parcheesi board, kites, bodices) for their objective reality, as a substitute for human presence and for an interactive/physical engagement with the viewer, but I don’t know if they are anything more than surfaces for markmaking. Perhaps the tortured/burnt/sutured skins could have been sealed away as flat surfaces, or perhaps they work better as suspended/displaced objects, viewed against the backdrop of human bodies strolling in the gallery. The game of chess is perhaps too direct or rather illustrative or may be it helps elicits a direct response. Perhaps it only presents the viewer with a range of contemporary issues with mapmaking or maybe there is a fine balance between analyzing both the psychic spaces (fact and fiction) objectively and asking for a redefinition of these imaginary lines with which we inscribe and divide. Or perhaps it’s a psychic conflict within the cartographic pursuits itself.