The Video Projection of Steinkamps Dervish Would Be an Example of Kinetic Art
Discussing the art of Aisha Khalid is no simple task; it requires a navigation of dualities and multiplicities, and a reigning in of ideas spread across a conceptual, disciplinary and methodological expanse. Her layered socio-political commentary responds to her experiences and exposures after in life, yet is articulated through a visual vocabulary formulated from personal and cultural histories drawn from a childhood spent in Shikarpur, Sindh, lending it a contextual ballast. However, the strong undercurrent pulling the narrative frontward is deeply spiritual and philosophical.
The contempo retrospective, curated by Masuma Halai Khwaja and spread beyond three venues in Karachi, is a monumental exhibit for the creative person and the Pakistani art world; and a rarity for the local art scene, both in terms of volume and calibration. It brings together selected works from Khalid's prolific practice spanning nigh two decades, not only allowing united states to view and understand the various concepts, themes and nuances through the highpoints of her career, but also providing an insight into her ancestry, inspirations, processes and evolution as an artist.
Part of a group of trailblazers from the National College of Arts (NCA), Khalid and her contemporaries are credited with pioneering the Neo-miniature movement which brought global contemporary relevance to an age-one-time tradition and the regional culture at large. Khalid's career has since blossomed to encompass a broad range of mediums and disciplines, including painting, new media, textiles, video and installations, while yet carrying inside it her miniature sensibilities. To then reflect this multiplicity through the selection of works that highlight the many seminal works and pivotal moments of her do and also bring it to crux with a unifying curatorial premise, while at the same time creating a dialogue with, within and between the spaces, is no hateful feat, and is executed competently by the curator.
The first venue, Chawkandi Art Gallery, presents an almost museum-like brandish that combines before works with personal paraphernalia – such as the jungle pocketknife heirloom of her late father, books on Rumi, a pressed rose and one-time family photos – to paint a moving-picture show of the artist and the influences that drive her practice. A brandish of the miniature table designed by her while withal a student, which is now widely used in all leading art schools, combined with newspaper clippings mark her early on successes, stand as a testament to the legacy she has created as an iconic effigy in the Pakistani fine art landscape. It is a fitting role for the gallery to play as the platform through which neo-miniature and its immature practitioners start constitute an audience at a time when it was only a radical new approach and not yet an established trend.
Frere Hall is the star venue where the major chunk of the display resides, leading the viewer through the major beats in the work. The interior of the space itself holds the capacity to arrange some of the artists big-scale paintings and installations, while too allowing for admission to a wider audience equally a public venue. Even so, its main forcefulness lies in its ability to converse with and enhance both the socio-political commentary – as a remnant of a colonial by – and the spiritual nuances of the works – mirrored in the magnificent mural painted past Sadequain on its ceiling. The almost explicit instance of this is the polyptych I Am and I Am Not (2021), which takes inspiration from the story narrated in Surah-e-Feel in the Quran, and speaks of divine natural might ambivalent against worldly forces. The serial of four panels higher up depict a flock of the weakest bird, Ababeel, annihilating a cavalry of elephants on the panel below. The serene dejection and earthy sepia tones tin be seen reflected in the ceiling above, which bears the phrase Arz-o-Samawat, translated to Earth and the Heavens, resonating the spiritual and poetic notes of the work.
This entire series comprises works created between 2018 and 2021, which read as a culmination of sorts of many of the creative person'southward signature visual and conceptual elements. Presence becomes more palpable through the human activity of erasure of corporeal form, the torso only hinted through weapons of war placed in formations in which they were once held. This concept is driven by Khalid's personal loss, the expiry of her father in 2018, weeks prior to which he bequeathed to her a jungle knife— fashioned together past her father, herself and her siblings. Now a treasured memento of fond childhood memories, it compelled the artist to contemplate the temporality of life and its endurance through the fabric possessions that survive us.
In that manner these braced weapons go symbolic of a legacy, of the grand fables of bravery, presented through the vernacular of historical Mughal miniature paintings. The delineation of various animals, such equally horses, lions, elephants, and birds, becomes symbolic of the brave and innocent who become collateral casualties of someone else's war, dispensable bodies pb to slaughter with promises of honor and martyrdom. It becomes allegorical of the true nature of mod warfare equally impersonal, where faceless foes launch attacks on united nations-named threats.
The narrative unfolds upon endless geometric patterns in greens, blues and golds, serving the dual purpose of denoting concrete infinite in the form of an abstract mural of color fields, and a spiritual patently which adds a mystical dimension, giving way to complex readings. With multiple opposing vanishing points, there is movement and rhythm, also equally a sense of clashing antagonistic viewpoints. These patterns are a fundamental aspect of her do, underscoring the diverse shifting narratives, providing an overwhelming sense of her laborious technical process throughout the exhibit. Intricately hand-painted in layers without the aid of a preliminary drawing, they have a meditative repetition that transforms each work into a spiritually transcendent experience, both for the artist and the audience. It is reminiscent of religious rituals and recitations, bringing peace to the mind and creating a state of deep contemplation.
Inspired from the traditional flooring in her childhood habitation in Shikarpur, these patterns entered her small-scale miniature works early on as flat visual devices, seen in works such equally Silence with Pattern (2000) and Form X Pattern (2000). The flat patterns acquired a sense of perspective in her later works, the earliest case of which can be seen in an Untitled work created through observation of a dome during a residency in Mumbai, on view at Chawkandi Gallery. It became a precursor to the vortex, which appeared in her works in 2006, as seen in Honey Triangle (2006), which acts most as a portal betwixt realms, between man and the divine, bringing them together as 1 through its cyclical kinetic free energy that creates dizzying illusions in certain cases. It echoes the whirling of the dervish in its static, rhythmic movement, or the circumambulating of the Ka'aba while performing the Tawaf, an important ritual part of the Umra or the Hajj in Islam. This is explored throughout many of her works, such equally the serial At the Circle's Middle.
In a serial of works titled Two Worlds As 1(2016), these vortexes create abstruse compositions notwithstanding the narrative becomes political, with two opposing sides co-existing yet at odds with each other, originating from opposite ends but never quite able to come across; a visual representation of the conflicts raging in the Middle Due east at the time. Nosotros encounter the camouflage hues that get-go emerged in Khalid'due south piece of work post 911 to speak of global discord make an appearance here, along with brilliant reds mimicking wounds.
This sort of discourse has been an integral aspect of her work, especially after she travelled to the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam for her postal service-graduate studies. For the commencement time she was viewing herself through the eyes of the other, and in 2001, equally the world erupted with the fall of the Twin Towers, these attitudes were intensified. Equally a outcome, we see a shift from personal and cultural dialogue to sociopolitical commentary. The deportation, new experiences, and the Western response to her Eastern colloquial – which placed the civilization of adornment nether a patronizing gaze – compelled her to create the video work Conversations (2002). Her frustration can exist felt in the manner a Caucasian mitt ruthlessly pulls autonomously a rose beingness simultaneously embroidered by a set of chocolate-brown easily in the adjacent frame. Here she dismantles the Orientalism, cultural hierarchies, and the suppressive, overbearing expectation to fit a certain Eastern mold.
These 'conversations' have henceforth continued in her work for years to come in diverse different forms. In Name, Class, Subject (2009), one of three fine art books where the artist reclaims the traditional artform of Mughal manuscript painting (equally opposed to the Western idiom of vertical, isolated viewing), she addresses how mail service-coloniality and Western hegemony manifests itself through language, and the social disparities this gives rise to, perpetuated by the systematic othering of local languages in favor of English. This is represented visually through the opposing sides of English and Urdu in a notebook, the latter rendered with minute 'press errors'. The burqa-clad body, navigating these lines, becomes a displaced figure attempting to detect her place; echoing the creative person'southward own disorientation, coming from an Urdu medium groundwork, when travelling to Europe as a young student.
This is a proficient case of how the veil has evolved over the years equally a symbol in Khalid's work that goes across its near obvious readings. It appeared early on as seen in many of the modest miniature paintings on display at Chawkandi Gallery, including Nascence of Venus (1994), Captive (1999), Pattern to Follow (2000), and Form ten Design (2000). It acts as an early on precursor to the concepts of presence and absence observed in the most recent series of works, where the body is completely invisible behind the burqa, which itself is only seen as a silhouette, almost one with its surroundings. Here the iconic unbound spaces of her large-scale works have non yet opened up, still enclosed to create a sense of claustrophobia. The shrouded forms entrapped in a 'chaardewari' announced alongside the rose and lotus flower motifs, which betoken towards concepts of honor, dazzler and purity rooted in cultural value systems and go mechanisms of gender-based suppression and control.
This early feminist narrative is mayhap slightly insular in its arroyo to a complex subject, presented through imagery nonetheless largely adherent to the stylistic archetype of the genre. This is remedied every bit her worldview widens, urging her critique to have on a duality. She begins to question the true source of the oppression that is routinely attributed to the veil and the hypocrisy and arrogance of the white savior attempting to gratuitous the voiceless brown adult female. Walking through the scarlet-light district of Amsterdam, Khalid saw the same objectification, exploitation and oppression, manifested in a reversal of the Eastern notions of modesty. In I Was Y'all (2013), the bloom retains its hues higher up the curtain rather than below, the veil perhaps revealing an inner beauty that goes otherwise unnoticed. In I Am and I Am Not (diptych), (2021), weapons of state of war wielded by invisible forces threaten a rose in attempts to protect information technology from its own thorns. This moves beyond the veil itself and alludes to wider political implications of exploitation in the guise of protection and assistance, and exercising power and control in the proper name of freedom.
By this time, the visual of the burqa itself had taken on a more subtle appearance until only the hemline tin can be seen every bit its representation, transformed into soft folds that encircle the vortex, the ambiguity opening it up to interpretation, until it re-appears in 2012 in a series chosen Larger Than Life. Here the artist takes it in a completely new management, still, transcending its physical and socio-political connotations to portray the spiritual and the poetic. As the name suggests, it takes on a large, overwhelming form, rendered in black, with a green vortex at its center, placed next to a light-green patterned mantle covering most of the canvas. The colors are inspired from the Muslim holy sites in Mecca and Medina and take been used by the artist in many works to tap into her spiritual side following her tor tip to Media to perform Umrah. It is the veil betwixt man and God, the lover and the beloved, between this world and the next, representing a search for divine truth and enlightenment. Yet one must wonder if the connotational baggage of the image tin so hands be shed in a world where it has been burdened with such a controversial influence, and whether those readings can be completely avoided or are even invalid. Then again, nosotros must question whether these meanings are warranted, and perhaps these representations can become our bid to repossess its truthful essence.
Even though the overtly feminist commentary was short-lived in Khalid's work, and while she denies her work having any kind of gender identity, there is a sense of the South Asian female person perspective that is inevitably inescapable in her practice, equally this specific context is uniquely her own. Information technology manifests through her modes of expression, especially in her use of textiles in one class or another, whether through the act of embroidery, the portrayal of curtains and the veil, the use of patterns and flower motifs, of straight use of textiles to create tapestries, comforters and garments. Information technology emerges from a childhood fascination with local crafts, such equally sewing and embroidery, growing upwards in a society personally involved in the entire process of making clothes, from buying textile to dyeing, embroidering and stitching. She believes that we are all amateur fabric designers in our homes and accept that creative sensibility.
The technique she developed for her iconic textile works— comprising thousands of gold and silver-plated dressmaking pins painstakingly pierced into layers of thick fabric by hand— carries a like spiritual essence to her geometric patterns, illustrated through a functioning piece at PNCA in 2017, where she sits engrossed in her work while the kalaam of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai is performed by musicians from the mausoleum, creating a spiritual connection betwixt the 2 acts. The resulting artwork featuring the discussion Ishq in Urdu script with sharp ends of golden pins, alongside video projections of the performance are on brandish in this show, encouraging the viewer to contemplate the pain, trials and tribulations one must endure in the quest for divine love, inner peace, and self-actualization.
However, this feminine voice is used to talk near global political problems and further explore the complex East-W human relationship in the majority of these later works. Her work displayed at AAN Gandhara Art-Space, Fourth dimension and Patience (2013), gives audience to the silenced Eastern vocalization inside the global historical and socio-political narrative; providing an alternate take on the Industrial Revolution. Ii long pieces of material run across the length of the hallway, almost equally if in an industrial setting. The white muslin with half-finished embroidered roses speaks of the affects the western Industrial Revolution had on the weavers of Bengal, and the camouflage print running alongside it, pierced with big embroidery needles – much like in Comforters (2008) where it creates violence from a source of comfort through the reversal of a beneficial process— proposes an alternate grade of warfare and domination, across mere military strength. The half-done roses echo Conversations, both in terms of visual and narrative.
Beyond this piece of work, even so, this venue comes off as slightly redundant and underutilized in comparison to the others. While the works on display here are a significant addition to the overall narrative, the utilise of the venue itself does not add dimension or perspective contained from the other 2 spaces. 1 feels these works could mayhap have added a layer of dialogue to the ongoing conversations taking place at the main venue with spatial reworking.
Some other important textile work on display, Two World'south As One (2016), is hands the focal point of the show, commanding attending as it rises up towards the high ceiling of Frere Hall. 1 of her many large-scale commissioned works featuring magnificent tapestries, information technology is composed of (a kind of) pseudo-embroidery with gold and silver-plated dressmaker pins on thick layered fabric, a method conceived by the artist. The dichotomy that lingers nether the surface, and every bit seen throughout majority of her practice, becomes more than breathy with these works as the process of stitching becomes the medium instead; causing a displacement that splits it into a binary of pain and pleasance, violence and beauty. This particular committee was for SMK Staten Museum for Kunsten, Copenhagen in 2016; consequently, a lot of the symbolic imagery is a response to the socio-political climate of that time and space, where a authorities change had created Islamophobia and intolerance which was bleeding into the art and civilization landscape. Khalid articulates this bigotry through traditional Western farsi-style imagery of the marginalized communities conveying burdens as the monsters looms close, while the camouflage design on the flip side is symbolic of the combative forces brewing unrest. Both sides outwardly present their ain gleaming glory as they face up each other with precipitous threatening ends of the pins drawn in inner conflict.
Throughout the bear witness, one gets a sense of a circular intertwining of endless conversational threads that the artist endlessly develops, both independently and in relation with each other, every bit her practice continues to grow. However, in more recent works, produced 2018 onwards, ane more than oftentimes sees greater spiritual leanings, with a cocky-reflection and deep philosophical examination of life, death and across. This is evident in the titular series, and in a very recent video installation created after the onset of the ongoing pandemic, where birds-heart drone footage of Khalid in a ripened wheat field, moving in towards her and then zooming out, provides a sense of our insignificant existence in the larger scheme of things. Withal, her peaceful expression and the shot of the serene blue sky above gives a sense of hope and contentment that arises from letting go and placing trust in the divine, rather than helplessness. It expresses the need to succumb to the will of God and his natural order, encapsulated in the haunting vocalization of the word 'Hu'. It seems that her therapeutic procedure has propelled her do into a phase of healing from the restlessness and resentment in her earlier cultural and socio-political critique, which captures the essence of her journeying and charts a tentative course for the future through this retrospective.
"I Am And I Am Not" was showcased at Chawkandi Fine art Gallery, Frere Hall, and Gandhara Art-Space, from 28 November 2021, till 21 January 2022. Curated by Masuma Halai Khawaja, the retrospective was organized and hosted by Chawkandi Art Gallery and sponsored past HBL.
Nimra Khan
Nimra Khan is an contained art critic and curator. She graduated from the Indus Vallery Schoolhouse of Art and Architecture with a Bachelor in Fine Art in 2012. She contributes critical reviews and discourse on Pakistani art for diverse publications, including Dawn EOS magazine, ArtNow Pakistan, Youlin Mag, The Fri Times, Newsline, and Nigaah Art Magazine.
Source: https://thekarachicollective.com/aisha-khalid-between-culture-politics-and-spirituality/
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