Naiza h khan

I imagine crowded ferries crammed with people from every walk of life, the spaces as gendered as those of Golimar, undulating with possibility.

A close look at the sculptures reveals accumulations and pockets in which toy airplanes, bird feathers, and scraps of wooden scaffolding and driftwood seem frozen in the act of being washed up on a beach. Of particular note is the piece titled Armour Suit for Rani of Jhansi, which invites us to imagine a historic figure (one famed for being a warrior queen) through the work, while encouraging a more nuanced perception of such a figure through the juxtaposition of steel with feathers and leather.

The document, Indian Weather Review, 1939, contains a summary of weather calamities that occurred in coastal cities across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that year.

In this work, the contents of the document become a voice-over that acts as a narrative backdrop for the sculptural works. As a founding member and long-time coordinator of the Vasl Artists’ Collective in Karachi, Khan has worked to foster art in the city, and participated in a series of innovative art projects in partnership with other workshops in the region, such as the Khoj International Artists’ Association, New Delhi, India; the Britto Arts Trust, Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Sutra Art Foundation, Kathmandu, Nepal; and the Theertha International Artists Collective, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

(panelist)

Co-organised by South Asia Institute, Harvard University, Government of Sindh;

The Urban Unit, Government of Punjab; and the Institute of Architects, Pakistan.

2013   Violence, Insurgencies, Deceptions: Conceptualizing Urban Life in South Asia.

Asia Research Institute, NUS, Singapore, speaker.         

NED University, Karachi, speaker: Re-thinking Urban in Pakistan

2012   What is the Pakistani Public? Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)

2011   Risk and Revolution.  Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art, Dalian, China.

The importance of shifting that locus of ideas onto attire was important to my understanding of how this image might be communicated without the baggage or the prejudice of “nudity” or the “nude body,” which, I realized, had kind of shut down in people’s perceptions.[2]

In this way, a necessary act of self-censorship opened up an array of symbols and meanings that, in time, became perhaps more powerful and charged than a straightforward depiction of the nude female body.

As the novelist Kamila Shamsie observes, the armor suits constantly allude to certain mythologized versions of femininity—Rani of Jhansi, Joan of Arc, the Valkyries, the Amazons—and then go on to subvert those narratives with the inclusion of lacy, silky, feathery detailing, in addition to the lingerie-inspired forms themselves.[3]

The welded construction of the armor, seams studded at short intervals, gives the suits a “jewel-like”[4] appearance while simultaneously referring back to the hands of their maker.

Kathmandu, Nepal

2024   Mapping Water: Between Paper, Memory and the Archive. With these drawings calling out to be objects began the development of the steel armor suits, as well as the artist’s long engagement with various metals. “Near and Far sightSites Converge”, MONSOON Journal  

           of the Indian Ocean rim.

How do you negotiate issues of class? The intervening body is mutable and contested, belonging at once to the works, the artist, and the men whose skilled hands Khan appropriates to create the works.

Another of Khan’s works warrants mention here: the installation The Crossing, 2008. In her work, the small island archipelago becomes a lens through which we might examine concerns ranging from ecological to sociopolitical.

The welding marks come not from Khan’s own hands, but the hands of the man, a welder by profession, who assisted her in the fabrication process. Anna Marie Rossi and Fabio Rossi (September 2008), 7, accessed on March, 15, 2020, http://rossirossi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Naiza-Khan-The-Skin-She-Wears.

Khan, eds. Anna Marie Rossi and Fabio Rossi (September 2008), 12.