In the land of darkness is the spring-well of life

In this interview, Noorjehan Bilgrami discusses her career as an artist and the concept behind her solo show. She is an artist, textile designer, researcher and filmmaker. Her interest in traditional crafts led to the establishment of KOEL, a workshop that pioneered the revival of block printed fabrics and natural dyes and handloom weaving in Pakistan.

She has been working actively with many village communities and was awarded the Japan Foundation Fellowship in 2001/2 to research natural indigo in Japan. A founder member of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan, she was also its first executive director.

Her paintings have been exhibited in several group shows at major galleries in Pakistan and she has had solo shows in the country and abroad. Bilgrami has travelled extensively, has lectured at universities and museums in the United States, Scandinavia and Japan and has written numerous articles for international journals.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

Q: How did your work in art and crafts in Pakistan begin and progress?

A: I studied painting, following my interest in the fine arts. The work in crafts began with the chance discovery of hand-block printing. It is an ancient, traditional craft of the subcontinent that was on the decline in Pakistan by the 1970s.

Karachi had old centres of block printing that supplied printed textiles to the entire subcontinent but the business dwindled after Partition and almost disappeared. I happened to come across some craftsmen in the old part of Karachi. Fascination with the process and the desire to know more about the craft led me to explore and learn from the printers who had the knowledge.

In 1976, the atelier KOEL was established. Today, it is a design house that works with natural dyes and handloom products. This intervention helped to bring hundreds of printers back into their profession as well as many block-carvers, who had abandoned their traditional craft for better prospects. Subsequently, other entrepreneurs opened successful ventures and hand-block printing now flourishes in the contemporary market.

In 1990, I came across an indigenous method of resist and mordant printing, a complex process that goes through 21 stages to produce the textile ajrak in the villages of Sindh. I documented the technique and the number of existing craftsmen in a book titled,

 ‘Sindh jo Ajrak’ and made a documentary film titled ‘Sun, Fire, River - Ajrak, Cloth from the Soil of Sindh.’

In 1991, along with a group of artists, architects and designers, I became one of the founders of an art institution in Karachi, the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSA.) At the time, Karachi did not have a degree awarding college for the arts.

Within 20 years, IVSA has made a significant contribution to art academics and its graduates are making a mark in their respective professions. I was the executive director of the institution for the initial five years. Interestingly, Barbara Sansoni visited Karachi at the time of IVSA’s inception and subsequently, Anjalendran held several workshops there.

In the meantime, my work in the area of textiles continued. In 2006, I was commissioned to document the work of local craftspeople and write a book for the government of Pakistan for trade missions abroad titled ‘Clay, Cloth, Wood, Metal, and Stone: The Craft Traditions of Pakistan,’ along with a documentary film with the same title.

In 2009, KOEL expanded its focus with the opening of an art gallery that has hosted a number of major exhibitions. We also opened a café in the same enclave, somewhat similar in concept to the Paradise Gallery Café.

Q: When did you develop an interest in dyes?

A: While I was documenting Ajrak, I learnt that the plant, indigoferra tinctoria, used to grow wild on the banks of the Indus River. With the aggressive marketing of synthetic dyes from England and Germany, indigo and other natural dyes had suffered a major setback.  

I discovered a lone farmer in Sindh, growing indigo primarily to use the leaves of the plant for export to the Middle East where it is used as black henna. I documented the technique of indigo cultivation and extraction of the dye, that is in itself a fascinating process. It is an amazing, natural and traditional dye.

I was awarded a fellowship in Japan in 2001/2 to do a comparative study on indigo cultivation and usage between Pakistan and Japan. I visited all the indigo (aizome) farmers in Japan and found the plant species, cultivation and method of extracting dye and preparing the indigo vat is totally different to that of Pakistan.

It was a tremendous learning experience, I met a lot of wonderful indigo artists like Hiroyuki Shindo Sensei, whose work inspired me and hence the use of natural indigo began in my painting. Tones of brilliant rich blue can be obtained from the dark, frothy vat of indigo. To use this liquid dye is a challenging task. A mark made cannot be erased or painted over.

Q: Tell us about your connection with Sri Lanka and how you relate to Sri Lanka as a country?

A: This is probably my seventh visit to Sri Lanka since 1989. On my first visit, I just fell in love with the country. I grew up and spent my childhood in Hyderabad, India where the landscape is very similar to Sri Lanka with its red earth and heavy green foliage. My visit to Sri Lanka probably brought about a sense of nostalgia in me.

There is something here, in the spirit of this island, the nature of the people and in the environment that draws me… the deep rich green vegetation, the turquoise sea, the incredible sunsets and the red earth overwhelm me.

Almost ten years ago, I spent some time painting in Sigiriya. The tranquil, peaceful quiet air of that space with the looming, magical rock with history embedded in it invoked strange, primordial feelings that led to a series of paintings titled Sigiriya.

I came back several times after that visit. A few months ago I returned with the intent to paint, almost an act of homage to this land. I was fortunate to rent a space in Moratuwa by the river, a simple house designed by Anjalendran, where I could paint in solitude.

Strangely, I began by using rubbings from jaggery boards. These are antiques and are no longer made. On an earlier trip I had bought a few, simple grid patterns carved in relief, to imprint patterns on jaggery.  I saw a connection between this and the grid I had been working with, which has its basis in the geometry of Islamic patterns and is related to the Mandala and the concept of meditation.

The work is embellished with bits of copper gold – the ornamentation, the glint, is like the jewelry of the Kandyan dancers or the illumination of old manuscripts.

I used the deep red soil from Jaffna to symbolise the global situation of all displaced persons, all those who have lost their families, lands and ancestral homes, and have only been left with memories. With the division of the subcontinent millions of people migrated between India and Pakistan – the largest exodus in history. Our land continues to be fraught with war – both internally and externally. Over 60 years have passed since that momentous event, but the promised land of equality and opportunity has yet to see the light of day.

‘Incomplete Thombu’ by T. Sananthanan, published by Sharmini Pereira has been a source of inspiration for this work. The heart-wrenching reminiscences of displaced people and the layout of their homes drawn from their memory, echoes the painful nostalgia of displaced families of the subcontinent.

Q: How to you view your own artistic practice?

A: My art practice has not really been sustained. A lot of my time has been spent in the crafts sector, in documenting and working for the revival of crafts. This was one of the reasons perhaps to seek this space and allocate a time, to cut off from any intrusion. The need is felt acutely for continuity in my art practice.

This body of work is important for me. Working in complete isolation, I had the opportunity to synthesise the ubiquitous events that have been relevant to me – the need to simplify, to make it minimal, to remove all the superfluous layers that surround us. This includes verbose statements.

The work has to communicate and speak for itself, and the quotation by Balthus in your Gallery sums it up: “Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language.  I don’t know what to say about what I paint really.”

For several years I have been working on paper. A thicker paper absorbs the dye and the liquid, while I had worked previously with a more surface-oriented palette knife on canvas. Now I enjoy soaking my paper with the dye and then making my lines. What really gets connected for me in this process is the weaving of the warp and the weft and making my lines like an etching. It almost resembles the act of a craftsperson, of the very simple work of how they repeat again and again. Repetition for me is a meditative act.

Q: How do you manage the various roles you play in the arts and crafts in Pakistan and of course, your work as an artist?

A: There is no doubt that it has been a constant juggling act. There have been a few guiding principles for me. I would only begin or accept any task that I passionately believed in.  Subsequently, everything else had to be removed to create a clean space for that activity… for me to be totally consumed by it. I have to admit that my family’s support has been admirable.

There is no compromise, whether I am painting, or working on a book or a documentary film. I am branded as a perfectionist, the detailing of anything is very important for me.  One has to give complete attention to what one is doing.

Q: Where do you see yourself now?

A: I feel I have played my role at IVSA and to a large extent at KOEL. I now need to get on with something new. As an artist, I now need to work consistently and focus on painting. Commencing a journey of exploration within myself rather than looking outside.