“This is God’s command: love and justice.” (Qu’ran 16:90)
— From Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition by Omid Safi.
Last month, my friend Asad Kamran exhibited his work at a post-residency exhibition (vernissage) titled, “And it’s just because I love you,” facilitated by Emem Etti and in collaboration with Cyber Love Hotel, at Eastern Bloc’s gallery here in Montréal. The month-long residency provided nine emerging artists the opportunity to utilize the labs and facilities to create artworks speaking to themes of love, care, joy, resistance, and closeness. Asad’s installation piece, “Winged Messenger” is an ode and love letter to his mother, who “no longer lives in this physical world.”
At the centre of the piece, one sees a bird sculpted using Kashi Kari: an indigenous form of hand-painting ceramics that is often found in Sindh, Pakistan. However, attached to this bird—with its beautiful, vibrant colours and detailing—are 3D wings replicating a Heron TP, printed by Asad himself. The Heron TP is a combat drone currently being used by Israel in carrying out the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In the letter addressed to his mother, Asad reflects, “These drones, they look like birds. You loved birds […] Look what they have done to the birds.”
On the floor, one quickly notices a shattered pixelated screen, a rose, a smattering of letters, and a copy of Azad Essa’s Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel. Displayed on the corner walls and behind the 3D-printed Kashi Kari bird drone, were two of Asad’s paintings, using colours as vibrant and historically ancestral as those on the Kashi Kari bird. One sees a lion, which one who knows the meaning of the name ‘Asad,’ might assume is a self-portrait. The lion’s gaze meets mine with an intensity of emotion, he seeks resolution through this rage. He seeks the smell of roses. He seeks to protect and nurture urgently. He seeks love and justice.
I spoke with Asad about his recent work and art, but more importantly—what fuels it.
Zahra Haider: How does your relationship with your mother influence your ongoing work and art?
Asad Kamran: When I lost my mother, some years ago, I was pushed into the abyss of longing. I was momentarily removed from the safety of love and tossed into a place of detached absence. The access to that space for me has become a deeply powerful, empathetic space to access, now. The contrast between the safety and presence of love, and then its absence and loss, brings to the fore the precariousness of our beings, and our realities. How things can just change.
The relationship I have with my mother now is of love and power. To be able to access that space of truthful despair, to be able to empathize, with the despair in this world. When I read the news of more than 25,000 Palestinian children who have become orphans, I re-enter that space that I was once in. Grief and love are portals of connecting. My mother’s absence has granted me the ability to connect with suffering, on a very felt and human level. This gives my life meaning, and it gives the work that I create a rooted foundation.
ZH: What is this sense of urgency you refer to rooted in? How do you feel your art can represent the ongoing oppression that South Asian/Arab and/or Muslim folks experience in the contemporaneous world today?
AK: I read somewhere, that there are years, in which nothing happens, then there are months, in which decades happen. I do feel like we live in such times. For us to be witness to such barbaric violence so closely, through our screen — stirs a bizarre, gut-wrenching shock in me. For me, it is a moment of an awakening of sorts.
I see the stark difference in my state of being now versus even a few months ago.
There is a realization of foundational falsehoods of the infrastructures and institutions that we relied upon as a way to support our lives and lifestyles. Time and action are coupled to create tragedy in this day, if more than 20,000 people have been killed in 60 days, a sense of slipping time emerges. Life seems precarious, life seems short. To be able to breathe, to be sheltered, seems like a blessing.
To say what I feel, in the face of constructed lies, by mainstream institutions, seems to become an urgent responsibility. In the face of the erasure of indigenous identities, there seems to be an urgency to speak up. It is as if there is a fire, of hate, and arson, spreading through certain regions of the world, in real time. It is approaching us, how can we not speak up, now? What will we do to stop the fire? Or will we allow it to burn us to ashes?
This feeling is also backed by fact. A stark difference is also visible, in the value of the lives of those who are being murdered, and those who are giving the orders to murder. The line between right and wrong is so visibly sharp at the moment it seems. I try to employ indigenous craft, more and more so, in my art, as a way of archiving what is present, in the fear of an upcoming raging wildfire. I see my work, evolving into these “premonitions,” these reminders.
Where in this specific exhibit, the winged messenger, that emerged from Hala, mutilates to adopt the wings of a TP Heron, the same drone that Germany lent to Israel, in November 2023. It is the same drone that India deploys in Kashmir, and the predecessor of a newer drone that India has purchased from Israel to deploy in Kashmir, the most highly militarised zone in the world. Modi is also very keen to learn from the Zionist playbook, as he purchases “battlefield tested” technology from Israel, and now Adani Group in India, co-manufactures military weapons.
We can predict similar tactics of oppression being deployed in Kashmir. It may soon be like Gaza.
Hala, that area itself, is the expression of a people living under an oppressive regime. Where a self-serving, corrupt government, rules the lands of Sindh, there is almost zero provision of necessities and civic infrastructure. The craftsmen who create these handcrafts live in intensely impoverished situations, with many baseline human life needs not accounted for, yet they create because that is what they do.
I want to bring those stories to the front, through my journey as an artist. Through bringing focus on the beauty of what is created, of what emerges. As oppression perseveres, a looming threat of the death of craft also exists. In Hala, the master craftsman, who I have visited and hope to work with and learn from more intently, now has mouth cancer. The lack of proper medical care will possibly be the cause of his death before any bomb could strike him.
The case of the Palestinians has created a stark realization for me, as an artist, the idea, that the oppressor perseveres throughout time, from Karbala to Kashmir to Sindh, from Netanyahu to the Pakistani military to Modi, in the face of this oppression the artist will also persevere, to use the voice of witness as a way to speak for those, who are being silenced and removed from the surface of this earth.
ZH: What does the importance of indigenous materials hold for you? I’ve noticed your other work also refers to indigeneity in a Pakistani context, why do you feel it’s important to showcase the work of and collaborate with indigenous ‘Pakistani’ artists?
AK: The practice of an artist, as a solo creator, has been limiting for me, as an individual. As I put my brush to my canvas, I see my limits. As I travel through Pakistan, more so through Sindh, I am put face to face with my privilege. I have the ability, to frame myself in a way, to bring a contemporary, wealthy, urban audience, to see the work that I create. Ali’s Mamoo in his workshop in Hala is a master craftsman, the speed with which he paints the petals, on that urn, is putting me to shame. It is a humbling blow to my artistic ego. However, as I mature, I understand the value of collaboration. To use my privilege of a contemporary education to formulate connections. I feel the value in a collage of ideas and processes to come to new conclusions.
Also, I have felt like an outsider to the masculine, othering culture, in Karachi society.
In my life story, painting was considered a femme trait, a trait of my being, I have run and been running away from. Run so far away, that I have come to Montreal, to express myself more truthfully. Working with craftsmen of my land, beyond the urban context, gives somehow, in a limited sense, me a grounding and ownership, of my own experience. That I can be who I am, and yet, be from my land. When I sit with Ali and have Mamoo paint and ideate, they are not vigilant about my hand gestures, they are not hyper-vigilant about my masculinity. Within that space, of the creator’s studio, I feel I have space to be an artist and feel accepted.
So, working with indigenous materials does a lot for me on a personal level too. However, I just see so much more wisdom and depth in artistic practices that are embedded in generations of ancestral thought. Kashi Kari itself dates back to the Mesopotamian civilization and remains an important element of Islamic architecture.
Through the pursuit of indigenous art forms, by adding them to my practice, I feel less alone in my journey as a South Asian artist, I feel like I belong to a story, much bigger than me, and also it allows me to a humble student of the craft, to own the idea of being an apprentice, an idea that has been lost in my western modality of education. It allows me to breathe into that deep yearning for my being.
ZH: You reference the ‘annihilation of the self,’ in what context does Sufism influence your work?
AK: These questions flow quite naturally into each other, it is so fascinating that they are organized as such. As I speak about the deep yearning of my soul, I stumble upon the question about Sufism and the annihilation of the self.
Well, as an artist, and trying to progress through one’s career, trying to present oneself to an audience, in Pakistan or internationally, it feels like one starts to gather layers, of presentation and performance. One’s being starts to become theatrical in some sense. Which can be fun, only if you don’t start taking yourself too seriously.
However, it is a tough one, because when you are framing yourself as an artist in this contemporary, capitalist framework, you are encouraged to create a persona, which soon enough, you start becoming a victim to. What was once your freedom starts becoming your trap—or in my case and the case of many artists—the art I create.
So, the idea of letting go of your identity, your image, and the presentation of your persona creates this free channel, of flow, of ideas, of a fire. I want to remove myself from my journey. I desire to shun the various layers that I have gathered from the external. I want to say what I feel through my work. And may that be wrong, or not understood as critically profound, or deep, or limited in its scope, or factually not intensely researched. If I start to take myself too seriously, the clarity of feeling starts to become affected and inflicted. I start becoming a victim of the performance trap.
Then suddenly, I am taken back to that moment of profound clarity, when I lost my mother. When everything was so clear. Love was felt, intensely, in its loss, when my mother was being taken for her final rites, a large woven garland of desi gulaab was adorned by her casket, in which she rested. It was so clear at that moment, that beauty mattered, feeling mattered, and love mattered, and I knew not, who I was anymore at that moment but just a vessel for feeling deeply and intensely, and smelling the perfume of the rose — while absorbing the symphony of wailing women in my mother’s bedroom, which was once, a safe space for me.
Therefore, to have an awareness, of the ephemerality, of our bodies, in this physical world, is a very useful tool for me. It allows me to go into a feeling space that matters and assists me in creating honest work. It is a space I have re-recognized, and it is a new space, and it is the current times that have brought me to that space.
As I see the world mourning, it is clear what matters. Hence, I submit myself, and it is through this new, perhaps limited but evolving understanding of the self through the Sufi lens, that I understand the idea of honesty more intently.
ZH: Tell me about the rose in your installation piece. What does it signify for you? What do you hope it may signify for those who are observing it?
AK: The rose, is an allegory of love to my mother, she was like a rose, to me, the last time I saw her, she was shrouded in roses. The rose, its perfume, its flamboyant beauty, is a reminder to me to resist, to be, it is a reminder of beauty, unapologetic flamboyance, elegance, rage, sadness, seductive grace, depth and the wonders of nature’s gifts. It is a reminder that one can exist beyond binaries. It is a portal for me to enter that space of being, and through its presence in my work, I invite the viewer of my work to join me in that space.
More on Asad Kamran’s work, or follow him on Instagram.