In Conversation With Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai is an artist living between New Delhi and Kabul. She works with a range of mediums, from painting and printmaking to embroidery. While her artistic practice is primarily concerned with women and the spaces that they occupy within the community, it is also informed by her personal experiences and the people around her. Well-versed in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, language and script also find their way into Arshi's artworks. 

Arshi’s new exhibition and debut solo show–which opened at Blueprint 12 in New Delhi–showcases her latest work, Nafas or The Isolation Diaries. The series comprises 120 letters written to her husband over a period of ten months from March 2020 when India went into lockdown due to covid-19. Becoming artworks on cloth, the words and letters resemble the pages in a type of diary as Arshi tries to make sense of these unprecedented and uncertain times.

We caught up with the artist to talk about the use of textiles in her work, her ideas of home and her first solo exhibition.

Do you think of yourself as a feminist artist?

If by Feminism you mean the concern for equal rights, then I believe we are all feminists, and so am I. The iconography in my work is inspired by women, their lives and their emotions. I deal with theirs and my position in society, as well as the voices that we either never hear or are sometimes drowned out. I hope that my work can bring forth these arguments through my feminist motifs such as the faceless woman and the pomegranate.

Kursi aur Dil ki baat, (Of Chairs and Hearts), April 20th, Ink on Manjarpat Fabric, 2020

Can you tell us how you use textiles as a medium?

My choice of working with textile was predominantly because of its versatility. I travel a lot between two countries [India and Afghanistan], and I needed a material that could travel with me everywhere I went. However, the agency of cloth is mostly associated with women, what we wear, what we receive in our dowry and what we stitch for the coming generations. It is inherent in our culture. It is our second skin, and my works in Nafas, are probably an extension of that. For the exhibition, I prepared the skin with pigments that I found in my mother’s garden, which, for me, makes this series multi-tiered with personal narratives.

You mentioned somewhere that “we are all products of the choices our ancestors made.” Tell us more.

I guess I have a long way to go to fully grasp that thought. But yes, I do believe it is true. For instance, my maternal forefathers came from Kandahar and my paternal ancestors are from Damascus. Five to six generations down the line, we and our thoughts have all evolved in a way that brings together beautiful and different dimensions – especially how we see art and culture and our own customs from different perspectives.

Ek Adhuri Baat ka Mitna, (Erasure of the Unsaid), May 11th, Flower dye paste and ink on Manjarpat Fabric, 2020

Raag-Bhairav, May 18th, Flower dye paste and ink on Manjarpat FabriC, 2020

You live between India and Afghanistan. What is your idea of home and how does this influence your work?

Being a woman in the Indian subcontinent, you oscillate between that sasural (husband’s home) or mayikaa (father’s home); I wonder if a home even exists for a woman. And from another perspective, the home is where one feels secure and peaceful. In the given situation, I don’t feel either, whether I am in India or Afghanistan. 

I would say that it is my work that is an escape from this uncertainty and it is my fabric, ink and my artistic process that make me feel at home. 

How would you describe your process?

It is difficult for me to describe my process in words and ascribe a structure through steps and procedures. I can only say that it’s poetic, and Sufiana.

Your art explores the spaces that are occupied by women. Are they autobiographical at all?

Without a doubt, there are a few elements which are drawn from my personal experiences or connected with events of my past, but they also evolve and emerge through a more universal language. Overall, I would not consider my art entirely autobiographical. 

Dil.. Gosht ka ek Tukda hi tou hai! (The Heart is But a Pound of Flesh), June 7th, Flower dye paste and ink on Manjarpat Fabric, 2020

Congratulations on your first solo exhibition!! Can you tell us about the series and how it began?

Stranded in India in Najibabad, Uttar Pradesh during the lockdown, like many others I was uncertain about what the future held, and when I would get a chance to go back to Kabul to be with my husband. It was during this time, confined in my barsati (terrace) studio room at my parents’ home that I delved into a practice of writing letters to my husband, revealing to him in a one-sided communication my anxieties, daily routine, loss of loved ones and our marriage. The letters also include references from poetry and writings of Rabia Basri, Jalaluddin Rumi Balkhi, Bedil Shanaz, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ghalib, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche – each having their own impact on my thought process.

What do the letters say?

These letters highlight the concerns of a woman who is unable to come to terms with her life in flux, with its roots in a country where religious isolation, propaganda and intolerance have become the norm, and an uncertainty about life and political instability in the other.

Can you tell us what you are working on next and when you will be reunited with your family in Afghanistan?

I am not sure yet.

I hope that will be soon. 

Nafas will re-open at Blueprint 12 on 21 June and run until 5 July 2021. For more information, and to read Uthra Rajgopal's essay accompanying the exhibition, visit the Blueprint 12 website.

writing on the wall of arshi's barsati studio room, 2020