Written by: Nayha Jehangir Khan
Posted on: November 17, 2021 | 
| 中文
Nisha Hasan Detail (Left), I Wonder If You Know by Affan Baghpati (Center), Sana Saeed Detail (Right)
Lahore, an ever-sprawling modern metropolis with flyovers and densely populated townships, contains noisy intersections and historically rich neighborhoods which have quietly withstood the test of time. “Imagined Archives: Residual & Remembrance” is a multidisciplinary project by Fatma Shah, in which she invites artists to create works in response to the ancestral history and spatial reality of her family’s residence—which dates back to the 1930s. The Mehta’s were the original inhabitants of this residence, and their son Ved Mehta spent time here as a child. Shah’s family came to the house after Partition and they have been its’ custodians ever since. Delicate details of the past have been woven into the exhibit, which creates an immersive experience for the viewer. Each interior space of the house has been transformed and reactivated through artistic intervention. The artists participating in the project include Dua Abbas, Farrukh Adnan, Affan Baghpati, Nisha Hasan, Ahsan Memon, Maheen Niazi, Saba Qizilbash, Sana Saeed, Sahyr Sayed, and Imrana Tanveer.
Saba Qizilbash’s intricate details enable the viewer to traverse into a subconscious state of being. The linework feels archaeological, and it transforms spaces from a physical to a psychological realm. The viewer observes the intersections and feels a sense of familiarity with these vast scrapes.
Sino-India border by Saba Qizilibash
Affan Baghpati’s installation comes together to form a constellation. His creations are imbued with a love for eccentricity, curiosity, and compassion. “Non- illicit dream” and “I wonder if you know” offer viewers a novella of interpretations as Bhagpati assembles found objects with kinesthetic precision. His playful exploration can be interpreted as whimsical. However, on closer examination the complex movements, distortions of scale, and biomechanical elements—that fill the room with a human presence—can be observed in his works. An old refrigerator stands with its door open; a small painting is resting on the shelf. It is a portrait of the artist’s mother on her wedding day, which has been embellished to disfiguration. The hum of the old compressor follows one after they exit the room.
Installation View by Affan Baghpati
Nisha Hasan, who has close ties to the residence by virtue of being directly related to the family, has created a deeply emotive reflection on their life through her installation. The green walls and red cement floor are original remnants of the house while two wall cabinets have been transformed into a metaphysical space. Hasan has created casts of hundreds of pairs of miniature school shoes which are carefully lined inside the cabinets. A painting, by Hasan, of a young girl is hanging nearby. The connection between the painting and the school shoes can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Is this young girl a resident of the house, who is running around and playing in the corridors of the house? Do these shoes indicate of the number of steps it takes to cover the house from one end to another? A painting that hangs over the fireplace depicts the artist’s family and also features a groom in a “sehra,” who is standing in front of a red background. Rose petals, which are placed on the mantel, create an altar for a festive memory. Hasan has restored the necklaces worn by the groom, which were found within the house, thereby transporting the viewer to a forgotten time. The artist builds a visual narrative around the history of her family and affectionately recalls their life stories through her installation.
Nisha Hasan - I buried her where she fell ii
Sana Saeed’s ghostly paintings were placed inside wall cupboards, in a frame, and on the wooden console. The portrait of a child who wears a vacant expression is paired with an old box lid smudged with dusty fingerprints and stains. The crockery and china are neatly stacked and ready to be served. Saeed’s painting hanging outside on the veranda wall shows a draped sheet with creases, which implies that a group of people had been sitting there. Moreover, a root jutting out of the brick wall creates an optical illusion. Farrukh Adnan’s use of the surviving belongings of the family amplifies the history of the interior. He has placed his drawings inside empty velvet jewelry boxes, which creates a subconscious portal for the viewer. His works hang in the main corridor, which creates a river of visuals that leads to a muralistic painting, all the way up to the roof. Adnan captures the infinity of space through his minimalistic drawings. He understands the ephemeral reality of time and offers viewers an introspective moment through his work.
Sana Saeed Installation View
Artists Sehyr Sayed and Imrana Tanveer explore domestication, which changes the lives of women inside their homes, through their own observations and viewpoints. Tanveer’s video “Ifs and Buts” show her sitting by a traditional sewing machine creating numerous pieces of cloth, which are displayed on a large studio table. The investigation of the female experience through the act of stitching, creating, and assembling recreates the lived history that has shaped the culture and life inside the home. Sayed closely examines the act of meal preparation with “Invested Nostalgia II,” in which she prepares dozens of flour dough balls and places them inside a glass cabinet, which was left abandoned in the residence. The dough has hardened, cracked, and dried out, and is attracting mould. Sayed suggests that much like the cabinet with the rotting food, women are often left neglected and unappreciated for their domestic labour. Her pieces offer viewers insights into the role women play in homemaking, which is frequently left unnoticed when looking back at the history of a home.
Sehyr Sayed Detail and Sehyr Sayed Installation View
Artists used found objects and recontextualize them through their own lenses. Maheen Niazi has anchored her reflections on ideological conditioning and how it structures the family life. By using dozens of prayer hats, she creates multiple hanging walls which surround a single prayer mat that is constructed using steel rods.
Through an exploration of cooking utensils and traditionally packed rations lined on the dining table, Ahsan Memon plays with the materiality of weight, scale, texture, and mark-making in his sculptural pieces. The room upstairs contains Abbas’s installation “The Book of Day and The Book of Night,” which features a single chair placed at the center with its back facing the open doors of the two balconies. The installation, which is cut off from the outside, aims to make viewers to focus their attention on two side by side cupboards, which are separated by a locked door, that have notes, books, and photographs placed on embroidered mats. These journalistic documents are poetically interwoven for the remembrance of the home’s original matrons and the artist’s grandmother.
Fatma Shah has purposely retained the original interior of the residence, which has been collected over the years. The artists inhabit the space using their own methodologies and perceptions, which has created new associations with their former residents. The history of the home is deeply understood, relived, and reclaimed by each artist, thereby enabling a plethora of experiences in one walkthrough of the space.
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