My art practice interlaces the domains of painting, sculpture and installation. I use non-traditional cartographic and map-making techniques and create archaeological objects to comment on the agency, accessibility, and conflict in geopolitical and territorial divisions of the land by creating fictional parallel archives and narratives using archival objects and documents. 

My research interests lie in studying the biases in the archives and challenging our dependence on archives as history keepers whilst attempting to find parallel ways of archiving. I’m also keenly interested in researching the role of language and narrative building in displays as a form of alienation and othering.

 

Concept Note/ Artist Statement:

My practice draws from the universal experience of shifting places, finding new homes, and adjusting and absorbing into new spaces. Larger issues of migration, nationalism, citizenship, land ownership, climate change, and non-script language narratives intertwine to address my artistic research.

My relocation from Pakistan to India in 2009, increased my fascination with the idea of maps, borders, city limits, and everything related to geographical locations. I find it surprising that borders can create and divide places at the same time. Since then, I have been creating memorabilia through objects, photographs, and memories directed towards counter-mapping and alternative archiving.

Currently, I use para-fiction as a means of alternative archiving whilst working with actual colonial documents and archival objects. Colonial maps, cartographic documents, historical incidents, and photographs help me create aerial views of imaginary lands & terrains. The fictional archives created in this process are antagonists to museological practices critiquing the archives and display whilst referring to para-museology. The counter position on museology also emphasises archiving and museology as reminiscences of colonial practices.