Touching souls through henna

Humna Mustafa tells Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi that henna allows her to touch souls, tell stories and connect with her traditions and family.

The Indian groom’s passion for his bride is tested by the colour that her hennaed hands take—the deeper the colour, the deeper the passion is supposed to be. Similarly, the deep hues of Humna Mustafa’s hennaed textiles seem to reflect her passion for henna art.

Mustafa’s intricate, intense henna designs—from traditional peacocks to hypnotic concentric patterns—embedded onto textiles, were hung at the Arts Space, Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the Following Threads exhibition. Mustafa’s installation, titled Following Humna consisted of four panels tracing her journey of immigration from Karachi to Adelaide.

The first piece, Earth, she says, represents the beginning of the journey from Karachi. “(It is) a piece that symbolises a tight knit family and a communal family system.” The compactly woven Ajrak patterns (a traditional fabric created by block printing in Pakistan) acknowledge the importance of togetherness, over that of the individual.

Fire symbolises passion, soul and culture and is representative of India. “My passion is my culture,” says Mustafa. “The paisley design, based on an unripened mango, symbolises virginity, traditionally drawn on a bride to indicate her virtue.”

The third panel, Water, reminds Mustafa of her time in Iran and the discovery of new cultures. “The elaborate mosque-like patterns here represent what I understand of spirituality and a deeper meaning of my religion.”

Finally, Air, is for freedom and friendships found in Australia. “On reaching Australia, I felt I became even closer to my culture, traditions and religion,” she says. “While the concentric mandalas echo my inner growth of true self, a fusion of patterns ruptures societal boundaries, acknowledging that what makes this country is the coming together of many cultures and the telling of global stories.”

Stories are an intrinsic part of Mustafa’s practice—the henna patterns are the language in which she speaks. “My story is your story and your story is mine. It sounds confusing to others but my patterns are stories of the souls,” she says. “I don't see the human form as a body, but I see the soul within them. I believe, humans are a form of energy (kind of light ), and over the years, due to so much materialism around us, that inner light has been put aside in many people and in some it has almost died. When I draw the patterns, I see that light inside each soul and create a symbolic pattern that reflects that light. Hence, I create a new pattern every time I touch a soul, narrating a story about them.”

This connection that Mustafa sees between her art and the human soul is also reflected in her alternate reading of the four pieces in Following Humna. She reveals that each piece also represents her three sisters and herself.

She writes on her blog, “Earth reminds me of my youngest sister, Raazah, who has always been the peace maker of our family and has a heart of gold. Water reflects the spirit of religion and belief, reminds me of my eldest sister, Munazza . Fire is about culture that keeps me glowing from within just like Maria. The last piece, Air is how I see myself—living life like a free bird, growing in the direction of the wind, in search of discovering the many layers of life and its magical experiences.”

In henna, Mustafa finds an intrinsic link to the beloved family she has left behind. While textile design and henna became her profession only upon her formal graduation, the beginnings of her art lay in her grandmother who introduced her to henna when she was just three years old.

Later, she saw her mother drawing the patterns on relatives a night before all religious, cultural and traditional ceremonies. She began practicing on her cousins, neighbours and extended family. “I miss being there for my nephew and niece’s birthdays and special ceremonies. It's quite hard when I see henna done by others on them. So, whenever I go to see them I make sure we have a few sessions of henna bonding time with each one of them.”

Indian folk music’s sweet seduction

Once seduced by the Manganiyars, Roysten Abel is now taking them to audiences around the world, writes Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi

One of the most eagerly anticipated acts as part of the Sydney Festival 2010 is a show by the Manganiyars, a caste of Muslim musicians from Rajasthan. Their performances are nearly sold out and new shows had to be added to meet demand. You may be surprised, but director Roysten Abel is not—even when, after viewing Manganiyar Seduction, members of the audience often walk up to thank him for showing them God. “I am not surprised by the response, because that is how I felt when I first saw the Manganiyars.”

About 10 years ago, Abel saw a traditional concert by the Manganiyars and the experience lingered and in 2006 he included two musicians in one of his theatre performances in Spain. He had to leave this show mid-way to be in Germany for another performance.

“However, I felt myself wanting to hear more of their music. I called them up and made them play to me over the phone,” recollects Abel. “I knew then that I had been totally seduced by the music and wanted to translate it into a more physical form.” So rather than use music in theatre, Abel reversed the process by using theatre to create theatre in music.

In this production, 43 Manganiyars perform seated in 36 boxes, inspired by the windows of the famous red light district of Amsterdam—one he describes as being extremely theatrical and burlesque. “I loved the theatricality of it. The soul is seduced through the body and so I wanted to marry the two.”

Each box is curtained and framed by carnival lights. A single voice emerges, as the curtains on one cubicle are drawn. Soon the other cubicles light up, as a range of musical instruments—including the Khamacha (string instrument), Kartal (percussion instrument similar to the Spanish castanas) Sindhi Sarangi and Murli (snake charmer's flute, also called been)—and the voices of men, women, children and the elderly of the Manganiyar community, build up a spectacle of rhythm and song.

Adding to the theatricality of the performance is an animated conductor. “Traditional Indian musical performances don’t have a conductor. I found the conductor of Western Classical performances very theatrical and wanted to incorporate that aspect. The conductor is a rehearsed act. Besides, there is also the practical aspect that he has the entire crew of musicians to pull through the show,” says Abel.

Manganiyar Seduction has had a popular run across India and Europe and will later travel to New Zealand. So what is the cross cultural appeal of this otherwise little known traditional folk form, the lyrics of which are in Indian languages? “The show is structured and presented in a way that compels to keep your intellect at bay and immerse yourself in the experience. The audience is drawn into a world which is beyond theirs or even of the Manganiyars,” says Abel.

Besides theatre and music, Abel has also worked in film. “While film is quite different and has its own technique, I do want there to be a synergy in all my art forms. I was hoping that there is a space where they can all go together.”

Breaking out of conventions is nothing new to Abel, right from the time he dropped out of his commerce class, discarded the family business and joined drama school—informing his parents only after he had taken admission.

“Theatre was not, and still is not a career in India,” says Abel. “I did not think about how I would sustain myself or a family, I just did it because I loved theatre. That is how my productions are as well—I have an idea, and I pursue it not quite knowing how the logistics will work out, but things just seem to fall into place.”

He does of course have a couple of big ideas up his sleeve at the moment. The first, a major production with Manganiyar musicians, titled The Manganiyar War that will interpret the 10 days of the war from the Mahabharata through music. “I hope to interpret the atmosphere and mood of the war through the quality of singing,” says Abel.

The musicians you hear singing soulful ballads and Sufi poems hardly seem like the voices of rage or violence, I say. “They have an aggression between the musicians,” explains Abel. “Just as there is jugalbandi, there is also jangbandi where a musician tries to outdo the other.”

Abel’s second big idea is to create an international folk music centre in Jaisalmer that he hopes to have ready by 2012. “I envision it as a residency for composers, designers, performers, where they can create new works with traditional resources,” says Abel.

He is passionate about India’s traditional resources and has worked with various folk and street artists including magicians, jugglers, impersonators, snake charmers, and puppeteers. “I grew up listening to the usual rock music. It was just 10 years ago that I was exposed to folk music and discovered a different side of India and it was absolutely fantastic,” he says. “I delved deeper into the various cultures of India and knew I had to work in this world.”

The Manganiyars are not the only folk artists that have been successfully received by audiences the world over—Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed with folk musicians and acrobats from across India. Meanwhile, Underscore Records, established by Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan, gives Indian musicians access to the global market through an online store. The magic of Indian folk traditions is certainly making inroads into the global arts scene.

All photos by Wolfgang Krichner

The meeting of East and West does not multicultural make

Multicultural is too simplistic a word to describe the works of Nusra Latif Qureshi and Naeem Rana, says Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi

“It is not as if using the word multiculturalism cures all the inter-cultural conflicts between people,” says Melbourne-based artist, Nusra Latif Qureshi. Her words ring true when you consider the timing of ‘this reminds me of someplace else’ —an exhibition of works by Qureshi and her husband, which showed at the Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the Oz Asia Festival 2009.

The exhibition, described in the catalogue as representing “the harmony and the tolerance we have as a multicultural Australian society,” came just months after the media exploded with news of racial attacks on Indian students.

“Multiculturalism” has become a problematic word to use—too simplistic perhaps—when describing the works of artists such as Pakistani-Australian Qureshi and her husband Naeem Rana.

Qureshi trained in the rigorous art of miniature painting, while Rana comes from a family of calligraphers and started training with his father at the age of 12. Both combine their traditional artistic styles with western practices and elements to create a narrative.

However, being Pakistani immigrants to Australia is but one aspect of their personality and their work. “Sometimes its a bit challenging to be marketed as a ‘multicultural’ artist, as the work is seen by many to have an exotic feel, and some hidden meaning where there is none,” says Qureshi.

When asked to describe her practice in another exhibition catalogue, she wrote, “My presence as a woman, as an Asian, as a Muslim, as a migrant, as an ex-colonised, as a dark skinned individual and as a painter determine the course of images I make.”

The historical symbolism of the feminine figure has been a central theme in her work for some time. In the Red Silks series, which was part of the recent exhibition, Qureshi superimposes a self portrait—from a passport photo—with a Victorian era dress, Urdu text, flowers and birds.

She decodes the symbolism thus: “The text is comprised of Urdu alphabets and some words like qalam, dawat, roshnai (pen, inkwell, ink). The word/text is there as an imposed element, and shows my weariness of word—spoken and written—and its inadequacy at expressing human emotion. Bird for me represents a different state of mind that is not necessarily expressed in words or in phrases.”

In another series of works, also displayed in Adelaide, she approaches the one emotion most often represented in mass media—love. “In these prints I have tried to explore and comment upon the idea of love and how it is understood or misunderstood as an emotion,” she says.

She uses the most popular of these media—film, and more specifically Bollywood. “I worked with three old Indian classics, Umrao Jaan, Abhimaan and Kabhi Kabhi,” says Qureshi. “In all these movies, its not a straight forward ‘love-story’ as is represented in so many Bollywood and Hollywood movies. I choose the scenes that I found visually potent and extremely charged with some emotional state of the characters and put a ‘dialogue’ on it in the form of text, like ‘My love is eternal’, or ‘Love me forever and ever’.”

Meanwhile, with his brazen use of colour and seductive female silhouettes, Naeem Rana’s works allude to another aspect of Bollywood—film posters. “Film posters are one popular form that represents the local way of design and perceiving aesthetics in South Asia,” he says.

In Azadi Bachao, a female silhouette is superimposed with a fighter jet, the Universal Studios logo and the Apple logo, and the text Azadi Bachao (save the freedom) in Urdu calligraphy. Looking at the work, one is left pondering about the freedoms lost—especially for a woman—in a world of war and consumerism. “The presence, importance and the contribution of women in making a culture and representing it and carrying it—that is what I appreciate and celebrate in my works,” says Rana.

Seeing their works together in a single exhibition, it is quite easy to see the commnality in the themes that Qureshi and Rana pursue. Their use of the tools of appropriation and pastiche make the works interrelated and reciprocal—almost as if the couple is sharing their conversation with the viewer.

Though they have only collaborated on a work just once, it is quite visible that they borrow each others’ vocabulary. Qureshi reveals that the Urdu text in the Red Silks series is taken from an exercise sheet that Rana has been doing.

The couple came to Australia in 2001 to pursue post graduate studies. I ask them about the difference in the approach to arts education in the two countries. “VCA (Victorian College of Arts) was much more of a dated, colonial experience with little awareness of the world and art practices,” Qureshi says. The so called traditional training (from the National College of Art in Lahore) is quite contemporary, where we studied history of western art as well as eastern art.”

Even the attitude to artists is surprisingly the opposite of what I expected to be in the two countries. Qureshi says, “In Pakistan, people do not consider artists to be the ‘odd one out’ like in Australia and there is rarely a question like “But what do you really do?” as we have been asked by a lot of people here.”

Capturing the migrant story in collages

Perth-based artist Hitesh Natwala recently showed his exhibition of new works titles Paksploytation at Gallery Barry Keldoulis. He spoke to Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi about the vivid and diverse imagery he has employed in the new works.

Q. There are quite a few different themes running through the series in this exhibition – is there a thread of thought linking the works?

Most of these works were based on my experiences in India when I was there for a show for Chatterjee & Lal. The works may look unconnected, but that is because my visit to India entails a myriad of experiences.

Q. I understand the title of the show, Paksploytation is a combination of Pakistan + exploitation? What is the story behind this title?

The title came from the genre blacksploytation movies from the 60s and 70s that were mostly black and came out of America. I loved these movies. In fact, they remind me of bollywood movies because of their heightened sense of drama and all the tacky Dushum Dushum.

Q. Please tell us about the Agni, Akash... series and the films you have picked for these works

The series of posters were chosen partly because they were movies I loved as a child. The poster for Agni was chosen for its graphic, because it seemed to encapsulate the title of the show. Stragely this one ended up being one of my favourite pieces in the show.

Q Tell us about the use of self portraits in these works. Was it fun painting yourself as a muscular, Hollywood star?

It was a lot of fun painting myself as a muscular hero, though I am not fooling myself or anyone else I am sure. I have been painting myself in the works for a couple of years now and I do it in order to represent the Indian in the world at large. It is why I am dressed in typical travellers garb, the hat and the puffer jacket.

Our communities are getting out in the world, both as migrants and as tourists without economic or political reasons. In the case of my family and others in our community in London, we are the first generation to be able to do that.

Q. Why are these works names after the five elements?

The elements were about further developing the overlaying of East & West and hence hinting at the developing of an in-between culture as so many of us Indian have had to do living and working in the western world.

In the Indian elements are 4 of the 5 basic elements important to human life as taught to us by Hinduism: Water, Earth, Sky and Air (roughly) and in the posters are the 4 main elements important to modern western life, namely sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and fashion.

The African masks in these works hint at the place where I was born and the Australian women’s magazine (used as the backdrop) reflects where I live now.

Q. The use of womens’ magazines seems to be a continuing fascination for you. Is your house piled up with old magazines?

I have used old bits of paper ever since I was at art school and had a love of Kurt Schwitters and the art of collage. I found these Australian Women’s Magazines from the 50s and 60s a few years ago in a former studio. I loved them and wanted to use them in my art.

When I started the recent works and wanted to layer reference points from all the different cultures I have experienced, it seemed like the perfect time to be using these magazines as part of the Australian experience.

And yes, I do have a lot of old magazines, books and odd bits of paper which i have to take wherever I move (Hitesh recently moved from Sydney to Perth).


Q. These works are also quite a significant departure from your earlier sticky dot works... what drove the change?

The difference in these works and the series I did for the India show is that they are partially worked in the computer. In a former life I was a professional illustrator and missed using those skills. I enjoyed introducing this medium as a fresh new layer in my works. I also think the brightly-coloured graphical nature of computer imagery fits in well within my aesthetic interests.

Q. The floral works... Blue Columbine, Magnolia, Red Canna and Brevipetala... look like a more meticulous and detailed version of your previous floral works. Tell us about these works.

I wanted to look at flowers that grow relatively near me and blow them up to look at them on a larger scale. As a reminder of their beauty obviously but also as a way of saying that issues regarding the nature are looming large, with so much of land clearing happening for thousands of miles around Perth. The shapes around the flowers represent old fences, fencing in nature as if in a bid to control it.

Q. Why do you work with sticky dots? Is there a meditative quality to your craft of sticking dots?

My father was an accountant and the punching of the holes harks back to the days when I would help him with his accountancy practice at home by punching and tilling paper.

I love the idea of crafting of crafting my art—it is reminiscent of how so much both Indian and African arts and crafts have that carefully crafted and highly colourful qualities.

Q. The amoebic images in "He gave a gentle little nudge towards it" and "And everyone seemed to be talking at once" are quite similar to your previous abstract work. What those images mean to you?

These works followed the flower pieces and came about when looking closely at the flowers. I noticed a bee sitting on one of them. I then decided to try and design some abstracts that encapsulate those fleeting moments in nature we all observe. They are ephemeral, but momentous and remind us of the fragile beauty of nature.

Works from Paksployation can be viewed at:www.gbk.com.au/artists/hitesh-natalwala/paksploytation

Hitesh will also show at the Hong Kong Art Fair in May 2010 and later for Chatterjee & Lal, Delhi at the end of 2010.

The meeting of East and West does not multicultural make

Multicultural is too simplistic a word to describe the works of Nusra Latif Qureshi and Naeem Rana, says Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi.

“It is not as if using the word multiculturalism cures all the inter-cultural conflicts between people,” says Melbourne-based artist, Nusra Latif Qureshi. Her words ring true when you consider the timing of ‘this reminds me of someplace else’ —an exhibition of works by Qureshi and her husband, which showed at the Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the Oz Asia Festival 2009.

The exhibition described in the catalogue as representing the "harmony and the tolerance we have as a multicultural sociaty", came just months after the media exploded with news of racial attacks on Indian students.

“Multiculturalism” has become a problematic word to use—too simplistic perhaps—when describing the works of artists such as Pakistani-Australian Qureshi and her husband Naeem Rana.

Qureshi trained in the rigorous art of miniature painting, while Rana comes from a family of calligraphers and started training with his father at the age of 12. Both combine their traditional artistic styles with western practices and elements to create a narrative.

However, being Pakistani immigrants to Australia is but one aspect of their personality and their work. “Sometimes its a bit challenging to be marketed as a ‘multicultural’ artist, as the work is seen by many to have an exotic feel, and some hidden meaning where there is none,” says Qureshi.

When asked to describe her practice in another exhibition catalogue, she wrote, “My presence as a woman, as an Asian, as a Muslim, as a migrant, as an ex-colonised, as a dark skinned individual and as a painter determine the course of images I make.”

The historical symbolism of the feminine figure has been a central theme in her work for some time. In the Red Silks series, which was part of the recent exhibition, Qureshi superimposes a self portrait—from a passport photo—with a Victorian era dress, Urdu text, flowers and birds.

She decodes the symbolism thus: “The text is comprised of Urdu alphabets and some words like qalam, dawat, roshnai (pen, inkwell, ink). The word/text is there as an imposed element, and shows my weariness of word—spoken and written—and its inadequacy at expressing human emotion. Bird for me represents a different state of mind that is not necessarily expressed in words or in phrases.”

In another series of works, also displayed in Adelaide, she approaches the one emotion most often represented in mass media—love. “In these prints I have tried to explore and comment upon the idea of love and how it is understood or misunderstood as an emotion,” she says.

She uses the most popular of these media—film, and more specifically Bollywood. “I worked with three old Indian classics, Umrao Jaan, Abhimaan and Kabhi Kabhi,” says Qureshi. “In all these movies, its not a straight forward ‘love-story’ as is represented in so many Bollywood and Hollywood movies. I choose the scenes that I found visually potent and extremely charged with some emotional state of the characters and put a ‘dialogue’ on it in the form of text, like ‘My love is eternal’, or ‘Love me forever and ever’.”

Meanwhile, with his brazen use of colour and seductive female silhouettes, Naeem Rana’s works allude to another aspect of Bollywood—film posters. “Film posters are one popular form that represents the local way of design and perceiving aesthetics in South Asia,” he says.

In Azadi Bachao, a female silhouette is superimposed with a fighter jet, the Universal Studios logo and the Apple logo, and the text Azadi Bachao (save the freedom) in Urdu calligraphy. Looking at the work, one is left pondering about the freedoms lost—especially for a woman—in a world of war and consumerism. “The presence, importance and the contribution of women in making a culture and representing it and carrying it—that is what I appreciate and celebrate in my works,” says Rana.

Seeing their works together in a single exhibition, it is quite easy to see the commnality in the themes that Qureshi and Rana pursue. Their use of the tools of appropriation and pastiche make the works interrelated and reciprocal—almost as if the couple is sharing their conversation with the viewer.

Though they have only collaborated on a work just once, it is quite visible that they borrow each others’ vocabulary. Qureshi reveals that the Urdu text in the Red Silks series is taken from an exercise sheet that Rana has been doing.

The couple came to Australia in 2001 to pursue post graduate studies. I ask them about the difference in the approach to arts education in the two countries. “VCA (Victorian College of Arts) was much more of a dated, colonial experience with little awareness of the world and art practices,” Qureshi says. The so called traditional training (from the National College of Art in Lahore) is quite contemporary, where we studied history of western art as well as eastern art.”

Even the attitude to artists is surprisingly the opposite of what I expected to be in the two countries. Qureshi says, “In Pakistan, people do not consider artists to be the ‘odd one out’ like in Australia and there is rarely a question like “But what do you really do?” as we have been asked by a lot of people here.”

Shadow Lines

Sangeeta Sandrasegar explores the issues of racism and contemporary slavery through deep, meaningful shadows, writes Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi


Shadows are ephemeral, but the shadows of Sangeeta Sandrasegar’s works will linger in the mind, long after her solo exhibition at Gallery 4A closes on December 12, 2009.

Her sustained research and development of a visual language consisting of shadows has led to White Picket Fences in the Clear Light of Day Cast Black Lines, an exhibition comprising of one new work of the same title and some older works created between 2007 and 2009.

The cacophony of the busy Hay Street of Sydney's Chinatown dissipates in the dark and quiet enclave that the artist has created in the gallery. On the upper level, White Picket Fences... consists of two groups of two-dimensional, white acrylic sculptures of a soldier's silhouette, standing about a foot-tall on the floor. Light bulbs lie alongside to give the work a second dimension—or rather a second life—through the shadows cast on the pristine, white walls.

Within the silhouettes, lie a range of seemingly disconnected images--the Buddha, the Indian deity of Krishna, Melbourne's Flinders Street Station, idyllic landscapes from miniature paintings, hennaed palms, police squads and protesters upholding placards condemning racism. And here the narrative emerges. Those who followed the frenetic media coverage of racial attacks on Indian students in Australia recently, will immediately identify these images of police and protesters.

Sandrasegar was in Spain as part of an Australia Council residency when the attacks were reported. The constant bombardment of images by the media seems to have left a mark on Sandrasegar's psyche. The hysteria is recreated for the viewer in this work through the multitude of sculptures and in turn, their many shadows. The images of the protesters and police are copied from news clips that Sandrasegar saved at the time.

The viewer, drawn in by this part of the story, must now walk around, into and through the work, to piece together the rest of the story. Krishna is an iconic image of India and Indians—pointing towards the home of the immigrants. The idyllic landscapes--are they the homeland that the immigrants have left behind, or is it the new land they sought, but cannot find in Australia? The Buddha, is a symbol of contemplation and looking again--and that seems to be Sandrasegar's primary motive: to encourage viewers to reconsider the issues and read between the lines.

The title of the work brings further layers of interpretation to the work. White picket fences are the symbols of ideal middleclass suburbia—one that many Indian immigrants to Australia aspire. Picketing also has the alternate reading of protests—alluding to those staged by the Indian community in Melbourne after the attacks.

Sandrasegar says that the motif of Black Lines came to her after reading Tasmania's history. The Black Lines refer in part to the infamous period of conflict between European settlers and local indigenous inhabitants known as the Black War. During the 1820s, a human chain of male colonists—convict and free—was formed in northern Tasmania, in a failed attempt to move southwards for six weeks, pushing the Indigenous population into the Tasman Peninsula.

“This sounded like modern detention centres--these stranded spaces in Australia that they start creating,” she says. “Although we have apologised, how we deal with people hasn't changed—whether those people were here first, or they are coming in now.”

Even with the storm over the Indian student issue subsiding, debates have been raging over the 'boat people'. For Sandrasegar, this labelling of the 'UnAustralian' and the 'Other', has been a continuing area of exploration.

The second part of the exhibition—older works displayed on the lower level—give voice to other minorities—people caught on the margins of society. Among these, are three works from the series of seven, titled The Shadow Class, depicting the myriad forms in which slavery exists today. A carpet-weaver, a sex worker and a domestic—each a silhouette of Sandrasegar cut out from felt and then embellished with mixed media—are the Shadow Class.

Unlike her usual practice of objects that cast shadows, these works of black felt are shadows themselves—the slaves are gone; only their shadows remain.