A thing of beauty

The subdued, vintage sepia tones of Noorjehan Bilgrami’s new collection ‘Pathway to the Inner Sanctum,’ shown recently in Islamabad at a private viewing, transport one to a period in the past. Noorjehan dedicates this collection to her grandmother Khairunnisa Begum, the source of her cherished memories of Hyderabad Deccan, India - a composite inspiration for this show. Noorjehan was born just after Partition, in 1950, and moved to the newly made country in 1959. The first nine years of her life were spent in Hyderabad with her grandmother. Noorjehan traces the aural, visual and the olfactory as she reminisces about the past. She returns to recurring motif of the molsri flower found in abundance in her ancestral home in Hyderabad, and which is also muse to her previous exhibition ‘Under the Molsri Tree’ (2015).  Nature and nurture combine to delight a young girl: early morning walks with her grandmother picking kachnar buds or chugar, the flowers of the imli trees; sitting under the shade of the molsri tree on a hot afternoon stringing its fragrant flowers on a twig; the rustle of silk and gossamer tissue saris; the refined flavours of her grandmother’s kitchen - Hyderabadi khatta salan and lal mirch aur lassan ki chutney, the fragrance of ittar and the motia flower embedded in the air and in fabric - the memories are intense.

Noorjehan's work is almost a Wordsworthian paean to childhood

The philosophy underpinning Noorjehan’s work is almost a Wordsworthian paean to childhood, for “Nothing can bring back the hour/ of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.”  Innocent childhood thus, a perfect collection of moments, though lost, can be resurrected for the artist through something as abstract as fragrance. “The molsri flower, recurred in my life after many years. The heady ‘fragrance’ of the tiny, inconspicuous flowers, transported me to my childhood spent in Hyderabad playing under the molsri trees. Our olfactory memory is most potent. The flower on close examination emerged like a perfect lotus. Hidden in it is the Buddhist philosophy,” she says, and continues to explain that the molsri flower, when artificially enlarged, looks quite like the lotus flower with meditative connotations, inspiring a Zen-like calm for the artist.

These works can also be seen as a reflection on lost grandeur, a familiar leitmotif of post-colonial, in fact, post-Partition, art and literature: Noorjehan’s thoughts could be the autobiographical notes of a lady’s childhood memories of similarly culturally rich Lucknow or Delhi, combined with the transmitted memories of previous generations.  Cultural loss has always been palpable to those who left behind generations of culture to make their life in a new country.  “For me,” says Noorjehan, “it was an exploration, an attempt to reach deep within myself to areas - sensitive and painful sometimes - that had been left embedded safely.”

Remembrance, reflection and musing are the primary considerations in Noorjehan’s work

Yet loss does not hang heavy for the artist who believes that “the function of art work is the renewal of memories, of moments of perfection.”  While we may detect a yearning to return, it’s not invested in a desire for physical travel, but travel in memory, recalling a bygone era and lifestyle, invested with the cultural heritage and historical significance of the location of her grandparents’ home. With this awe of her personal past, Noorjehan shares geographical, architectural and figurative details: the ancient boulders that are an integral part of Hyderabadi topography, the shape of the Indo-Persian structures of the tombs of the Golconda Sultanate and snapshots of her ancestors. The tombs of the seven Qutab Shahi rulers located in the Ibrahim Bagh, quite near the outer citadel wall of the Golconda Fort, the capital of the Qutab Shahi dynasty circa1518–1687, a few kilometres from Hyderabad in Southern India, are represented several times in this collection. The artist gives the past a contemporary relevance using the printmaking process.

Noorjehan explains the complex printmaking techniques she uses - working with photo images from family albums, images she photographed, architectural images juxtaposed with her own drawing and paint in washes to create layered and finely scratched surfaces. “All mixed media work is on Arches paper,” she explains. “I have worked with acrylic, graphite, malmal cloth, and rice paper. Print segments are in archival ink and the prints are photo-etchings, with Aquatint and Open-Bite. These are also printed on Velin Arches paper.”

The demands of printmaking were supported by her residency at Cicada Press at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in November 2015, and most of the aquatints and etchings for this collection were done at the Cicada Press. ‘This gave me the opportunity to experiment my concerns in a new medium of printmaking that I had never worked in. Highly technical, it was challenging to translate the work through this partly chance happening. Under the expert guidance of founding director and printmaker, Michael Kempson, the work emerged as exciting responses to photo etching and the fluidity of aquatint.”

A highly respected artist, Noorjehan is also known ubiquitously in her avatar as curator of her Koel Gallery in Karachi and textile cognoscente, specifically of handloom weaving and natural dyes. The woven fabric she says “is deeply woven in my soul, hence till I breathe, it will remain integral to my existence.” Her affair with the colour indigo is also a thing of repute - Noorjehan eliminates any trace of natural indigo from this set of works for the first time: “I did not feel the need to work with indigo for this collection as the medium of indigo has its own demand of using it, and it was not necessary to push it in here.”

Remembrance, reflection, and musing - with a deep sense of historical memory - are the primary considerations of Noorjehan’s work.  It is lucid and well-structured, yet also visceral and rooted in personal emotion. It is analytical only to the extent of loss. There is no sweeping examination of history and the changing times.  However, going back to loss, this collection may not dwell on it but a palpable sense of loss is tangible – maybe just for the viewer and primarily as a contrast to present times. “In these times, there is a loss of innocence, serenity, inner calm and poise, the dedication, craftsmanship, relationships,” says Noorjehan. “Then, there was ‘time’ for relationships … more peace … and integrity.”

And going back to that Buddhist philosophy she mentions earlier, her view is succinct:

“Look within for answers … add the pause in one’s life to reflect before the next step.”

Amna R. Ali is an arts and culture journalist who has worked with The Friday Times, Newsline and Hello among others