Constructing intersections between the past and present, art poignantly reflects the cultural, technological, and political transcendence of ever-evolving landscapes. In ARTRA Magazine’s South Asian Contemporary Art Edition, we conversed with featured artist Ali Kazim (Pakistan), whose timeless works of art are amidst seminal public collections of global repute, including the Tate, Ashmolean Museum, and British Museum. Ali, in this interview, shares fascinating insight into the visual culture of Lahore, his city of origin, and the breadth of its influence upon his own visual accent as a portrait artist and maker of objects. Citing his time spent studying the archives of the Ashmolean and Lahore Museums, Ali delves into the significance of material heritage to his practice, the development of his signature watercolour style inspired by the Bengal School technique of Pakistani master A.R. Chughtai, and his endeavour to capture the spirited culture of Pakistan through his work.

Ali’s notable exhibitions mentioned in this interview include ‘Ruins’ (2016), ‘Ali Kazim: Suspended In Time’ (2022) and ‘Ali Kazim: The Weight of Blue’ (2023). His collection of works from ‘Ruins’ (2016) were multidisciplinary pieces ranging from painting to sculpture inspired by unexcavated archeological sites around Lahore. He mapped a fictitious landscape using these artefacts, rendering an estimation of the civilizations, people and lives that once resided in those places. His exhibition ‘Ali Kazim: Suspended in Time’ (2022) was a culmination of his time spent among the Gandhara artefacts and historical collections of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, as part of his year-long residency as Oxford University’s first South Asian Artist-in-Residence. In his 2023 exhibition ‘Ali Kazim: The Weight of Blue’, the colour blue unites his works across the exhibition across a series of portraits, referencing Buddhist mythology and sculptural traditions to translate the cultural nuances of the colour in South Asia.

Q | What influences have informed your style as a maker? 

As a maker, I learn from actual material like physical paintings, pottery shards, ruins from the Indus Valley, and Gandhara sculptures. There is a tangibility in my process. Actual materials, objects and artefacts have certain qualities that allow me to learn more technique and nuance. Visual culture and material depend on the access one has in their part of the world. If I were in London or growing up in Italy, I would have had access to different visual material. I could look trace Renaissance-era art to early Christian period works to later contemporary art. I grew up in Lahore where we don't really have access to that sort of material. In the Lahore Museum, we have miniature paintings, Indus Valley Civilization’s pottery shards, figurines or terracotta pots. We have another section for Gandhara art, which includes sculptures. There are works from the Mughal period, and some Islamic artefacts. As a maker, I learned from these things which were available in my city. They have formed my visual language, my accent.

Q | What is the significance of the body as a primary motif throughout your work?

When I was making South Asian looking portraits on paper, I was trying to create a very skin-like texture on paper through watercolour, pigment and rendering. I feel that in any work material has significant meaning. Without material, the work can collapse. For example, I was attempting to create skin-like texture in a portrait. I thought if I should try actual skin or leather. So I tried making some bodily images on goat skin and on leather with leather dyes. Those were not very successful pieces. 

From there I moved to another material: human hair. I made a sculpture using human hair and hairspray. I used invisible thread, material magicians usually use for their tricks, to suspend the sculpture from the ceiling in such a way that viewers could not figure out how that work was being displayed. It was a large free-floating form made with human hair, hovering in space like a 3D drawing. Hair as a medium is loaded with different meanings. There is significance about growing or shaving hair in a religious context. When a Muslim goes to Mecca, they shave their head. When a Hindu goes to take a holy bath, they shave off their hair. It is also a memorable object held in temples and shrines which people pay homage to. In addition to this religious lens, it is also a fashion statement. We're so conscious of the look it gives us. There is something about us represented through our hair. Most importantly, it represents the human body.

Ali Kazim, 2020, Man of Faith Series, Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation

Q | How did material inform your works in ‘Suspended in Time’ (2022)?

For ‘Suspended In Time’ (2022), I was invited by the Ashmolean Museum in the UK for an artist residency to look at their Gandhara art collection. I had the opportunity to go through their storage and hold these little objects in hand. These were objects that were perhaps made thousands of years ago, and I felt as if some of them still had the fingerprints of their makers. It was so special. In many ways, it has been the technique drawn from those materials that have shaped me. For example, I went through their collection of Company school drawings, which are very specific about their subjects. Whether the subject of the piece is a flower, a plant or a study of a head, there will not be anything painted to the left or right of the subject. Perhaps that element of my work is influenced by the Company school.

As artists, we struggle with the idea of the work and with the materiality of the work at the same time. I clearly remember my first solo exhibition in Sri Lanka at Paradise Road the Gallery Cafe, where I showcased works made with graphic inks. Later, I discovered that graphic inks fade away over time with exposure to light. I was very worried about it, and it became a technical thing I wanted to fix. I began experimenting with powder pigments on paper, which are stronger, more natural and would not fade with time. After a certain point I realised that the surface quality of the paper I was using is close to what was used by the Bengal School of Art. I started looking at the Bengal School’s approach to watercolours more carefully and figured out that during the British Raj, when Japanese prints came to the subcontinent, to Kolkata in Bengal, artists like Abanindranath Tagore and his peers were inspired by Japanese woodblock printing. This (mokuhanga) is done with water-based inks, which have a very soft and gentle atmospheric effect compared to Western printmaking, which are done with oil-based ink. They replicated that effect through diluted watercolours and developed their own way to mimic that effect.

From there I revisited the Lahore Museum with a different eye, trying to understand how the Bengal School had achieved that effect. When looking at their work, I incidentally started working around the technique of the Pakistani master, A.R. Chughtai, who had drawn his technique from the Bengal School. His technique has been lost in this part of the world, but I developed my own technique which no one else was practising. I was experimenting with different ways of making images, and it became something unique––inspired by the Bengal School but not completely. Sometimes, visual material can be purely technical aspects, which can lead you in a new direction.

Q | Can you speak on your use of the colour blue in your self-titled collection from 2023? What does it represent in terms of South Asian artistic tradition?

Indigo is the most indigenous colour from this part of the world. Historically, we see it in depictions of divine beings such as the blue body of Krishna. Blue tones have been used in painting to express dark skin. These were some of the reasons why I worked with these colours and tones.

Q | From men, women and children to animals and religious figures, your portraits represent a distinct variety of identities. Is there a sense of South Asian spiritedness or community that you are trying to depict?

Often my works feed into each other. For example, the ‘Bird Hunter’ series came after I made a painting called ‘Conference of the Birds’. It is a large five-panel painting, which sizes around 7 feet by 20 feet currently on display at the National Museum of Qatar. It is inspired by the 12th century Persian poem of the same name by the Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur. The painting has a 24-minute audio narrating the Farsi text from the actual poem. I took excerpts from the poem and collaborated with a Persian singer from Pakistan and created a vocal piece as well. That piece led to another installation called ‘Untitled: Conference of the Birds’. I made around 4,000 clay birds and placed them on an abandoned brick factory on the outskirts of Lahore for the 2020 Lahore Biennale. The point of the installation was that the unfired clay birds would deteriorate after a few rains and become a part of the soil. In that way, the work would finally be complete once it dissolves. In the poem, thousands of birds undertake a perilous journey to Mount Qaf to find the Simurgh, a mythical bird deemed worthy to be their king. These birds traversed 7 valleys, many dying on their way; some were hunted by hunters; starved from hunger; hearts burst from the passion of love; dying from the heat of the sun. Only 30 birds reached the Simurgh, where they realized that in the Persian language ‘Si’ means 30 and ‘Murgh’ means bird. The thing they were looking for was within themselves. With each work I responded to a different visual aspect of the same poem.

Q | Could you expand on the work which features on the cover of this edition?

It depicts a headgear from Pakistan. We have a big lake close to the coastal line, where Siberian birds migrate to spend their winters. There is a community whose livelihood is dependent on the migration patterns of the birds. What they do is try to catch some of them alive so they can sell them as exotic birds to either collectors or the general market to make some money. To catch these birds, they use other birds that they may have hunted before in a previous season and marked with dyed feathers to create head gear that they can wear in shallow water. Once in shallow water, they swim up to the migratory bird and catch them alive with their hands. The imagery in the cover artwork comes from that.

Ali Kazim (b.1979, Pakistan) is a contemporary artist who also works as Assistant Professor at the National College of Arts, Lahore. He received his BFA degree from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan in 2002 and MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, in 2011. He has received a number of awards and artist residencies including; artist-in-residence at Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; inaugural Karachi Biennale Jury Prize; Finalists for the Catlin Prize, UK; The Art House Residency, Wakefield, UK; The Land Securities Studio Award, London, UK; Melvill Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition, UCL, London; Art OMI artist residency, New York, USA; Young Painter Award, Lahore Arts Council, Pakistan; ROSL Travel Scholarship: Residency at Hospital Field, Scotland, UK; Vasl Residency (Triangle Arts Trust), Karachi, Pakistan; International Artist Camp, George Keyt Foundation, Sri Lanka. His work is included in the collections of the Tate, British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Metropolitan Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, Qatar Museums, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and the Devi Art Foundation.

Written by Kavinu Cooray
Co-Edited by Pramodha Weerasekera
Interviewed & Co-Edited by Azara Jaleel