Saba Hasan’s exhibition, ‘jo ġāyab hai, aur hāzir bhi (what is absent and also present)’, curated by Neha ‘Zooni’ Tickoo at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, presents Hasan’s series of book sculptures created over the past years. The sculptures featured at the exhibition have been created out of a quite distinctive practice followed by Hasan — of burning, folding, carving, and lathering the books with clay.
“Sometimes I dip a book in clay; sometimes I layer it page by page. I’ve even wrapped books in gauze, like mummies, after reading about Egyptian embalming. I fill them with spices or sand. The idea is sometimes to preserve knowledge, sometimes to redefine what knowledge, or truth is,” she remarks.
This method of covering books with clay, and the concealed text symbolises the denial to accept what is offered in the text. “So, it began with criticism, with questioning the validity of knowledge, which is handed down to us, year after year,” she tells TMS. Hence, using her art as a form of expression, she tends to break the conventional idea of receiving knowledge, and restricting it to one medium—books.
Hasan describes her style as one combining “the skill of a classicist, where craftsmanship is important.” According to Hasan, craftsmanship is perfected by practicing for years. “So it's like every little detail of the work is mastered by me before I convert it into an artwork,” she adds. " I'm 63 years old now. So, you can imagine the amount of effort I've put in about 15 years of work, being presented at this exhibition."
Notes from literature
The title of the exhibition comes from a line in the well-known nazm, 'Hum dekhenge', written by Pakistani poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz much loved in India as well. The title has been chosen because the poem is symbolic of revolution and reform. Curator Tickoo remarks Hasan’s artworks too have been borne out of unconventional ideas of defying the rules.
Faiz was personally known to Hasan’s family. “My parents knew him,” she recalls. “I grew up listening to poets reciting their verses at home. Literature and Urdu poetry have always been a part of my life.”
Hasan’s artwork is open-ended; it lets the viewer build his own perception. “Taking titles from literature helps. A poetic line expands the possible meanings, and it leaves a lot of open-endedness. Then, you don’t have to pin a work down to one interpretation,” she says.
One notes the short inscriptions and other writings glued in her artworks. These little fragments are almost like a window into her life. “The texts in my work could come from my mother’s letters, Mahasweta Devi’s writings, or my own conversations. They’re all fragments, small hints of places that I travel to and things [like stones from the bank of Kashmir’s Lidder river, or leaves from the Great Wall Of China] that I collect,” she adds.
Hasan’s works grips onto time and memories — manually. A book is sculpted, carved, and dipped in clay by the artist’s hand. The leaves, stones and shells collected by the artist stay with her for years before becoming part of a sculpture. “They connect us to the earth, to nature, to life itself.”
Wrapped in time
In one of the artworks, titled ‘Small Book’, the artist has presented a thick, off-white book. On the front cover, a little illustration of a man wearing a patterned shirt and a pointed hat, can be seen holding a blue book in his hands. Whereas, on the back cover, the other rest of the illustration completes — the figure is dressed in short, patterned pants, standing barefoot.
Another artwork, ‘Tower of Babel’, is a sculpture of books stacked on each other that eventually appears like a tower. Other works by Hasan include charcoal drawings, book sculptures with tiny pieces of gold foil pasted atop the book covers, and some with intricately carved shapes—as if carved into wood—of doors and leaves.
Speaking about the inspiration behind her method of making sculptures with clay and where she hides almost every text in the books with the material, Hasan adds, “Earlier, I used a lot of language because I’m comfortable with words.” However, the text slowly started disappearing from Hasan’s artworks when she realised she didn’t have to stick to the usual understanding of what’s being taught. Instead, she could find various meanings attached to a set of circumstances. That, in itself, became her form of expression. The best way to experience, according to Hasan, is to see it again and again, and find a different meaning each time.
(The exhibition will be on view at KNMA, Saket, till January 10)
