Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai: Pages from Hamid Manzil
Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai
Pages from Hamid Manzil (2020)
A series of 17 individual works of acrylic and ink on manjarpat fabric
Created in 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, each work is rendered in a style typical to the artist’s recent works including visual and conceptual motifs that set this particular series comfortably in her larger oeuvre. The body of work is defined by a subdued colour palette and includes motifs borrowed from the architecture of a home in small-town Aligarh, Hamid Manzil.
Many of the works are populated with text; in most cases, these texts are illegible, but combined with all the other visual elements, function as a mise en scène for the stories of Hamid Manzil that the artist narrates. In tracing out the elements of Hamid Manzil in her artwork, the artist builds a memoir. The jharokhas1, roshandaans2, doorways, architraves, and many other structural details of the building are reiterated here as elements that take the artist and the viewer on a journey in time through a building that the artist once called home.
Hamid Manzil was the hostel where Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai stayed for three years during her days as a student at the Aligarh Muslim University. The building itself, its architectural details, and surrounding environs including a mango orchard all created an ambience within which Arshi found her affinity towards Urdu poetry, philosophy, and romanticism - in Arshi’s words, “seems as though Ismat aapa wrote Lihaaf3 in Hamid Manzil”.
DEFINITIONS
1 jharokha - a window projecting from the wall face of a building, in an upper story, overlooking a street, market, court or any other open space.
2 roshandaan - a ventilator above doors in old buildings, created to let in air and natural light.
3 Lihaaf - is a 1942 Urdu short story written by Ismat Chughtai. Published in the Urdu literary journal Adab-i-Latif, it led to much controversy, uproar and an obscenity trial, where Ismat had to defend herself in the Lahore Court.
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