Installation Art

Lively Absence

Installation art is rare in Pakistan’s art scene. The lack of governmental support in arts education and promotion, the absence of qualified art critiquing, and the ad hoc but noble attempts of private citizens to further the arts in Pakistan have stalled and slowed cultural progress. Even for many art fans and regular exhibition attendees, their understanding and interaction with art is often limited to just paintings and sculptures. Many of us are unable to appreciate an installation, come to grips with functional art, or recognize the significance of a performance. Writers of art also find that they cannot fully articulate their interactions with these more sophisticated forms of art, and often, publications are conflicted about covering such artists and events.

However, artist Shehrezad Maher, a graduate from Bennington College, recently displayed her installation at VM Art Gallery in a show titled Hover/ Hum, knowing well that her art was going to be misunderstood and challenged. Using gallery C as the location for her installation, Shehrezad suspended colorful sheers from the ceiling and created a maze-like arrangement of the translucent fabrics, through which the viewers were to walk through. Only sunlight from the windows served as the light source, and therefore, became intrinsic to how we experienced the installation.

The maze-like arrangement was such that any number of paths could be taken and decided upon as we journeyed through the piece, equating our experiences to the paths we choose, meaning each walk-through held something new for us, each time. As the artist explained eloquently, she was “…sincerely engaging with the space to create an experience for the viewer that is hopefully more productive and rewarding as their attention moves from the obvious to the subtle and incidental aspects of the piece”. Each time that a viewer went from end to end of the installation, they commented on how they stopped and ‘took in’ the installation and the colors at different points; sometimes stopping dead in the center, or towards the end and looking back, or right at the start, and pausing to look ahead, beyond the five, six sheers that were most immediate. It was the subjectivity of our experiences that Shehrezad was playing upon.

Subjectivity in Pakistan’s art scene means metaphorical interpretation. For some viewers of the installation, the piece was about naqabs and burqas, while for others, it was a meditative walk that brought them tranquility. For Shehrezad, passing through her art was her way of conveying the “…role of light, time and movement in the work, aspects that hopefully create a space that vibrates with presence”. The number of times and the number of paths we took shaped our interaction with the piece, but each experience was made unique by the subtle and constant shifting of the sunlight. Just as the Impressionist painters captured the same scenes in changing light, the viewer was capturing changes in light as they passed among the billowy fabrics suspended from the ceiling. Suddenly, we were the artists, creating our own images as we interacted with the surroundings, the colors, the lights, and movements of the sheers.

Gallery C indeed vibrated with presence, even when alone. There was presence to be felt even in the absence of other beings. Shehrezad deftly introduced how ‘alive’ an empty room can be, when colors and light are abundant in any space. We just have to pay attention to the hover and hum that is about us…