Allegory of War — A Solo Show by Adeela Suleman
On most occasions, from known historical timelines to the present day, the word war deciphers itself as a comminative act in its core nature, whether waged against some country, nation, a militant group or any anti-state elements based on the then-manifested rationale developed by another nation, country, or a state itself. Bluntly said, it’s a temporal affair that attempts through the unspeakable atrocities that permanently change the anthropology and chrono-geography of the sabotaged population and the war-waged territory itself. This changes everything, worldviews, discourse, curriculum, and public opinion, regardless of the atonement and reparations later offered. We all know the cataclysms of epic proportions war brings; most experience it with only sight and sound, primarily through black mirrors at hands, through aural wavelengths or from the broadsheets. That’s another discussion if all these sources broadcast/report the events neutrally, are less biased and are not smoke screened. Combatants of both sides also smell, taste, and touch the carnages.
The concerned and enlightened members of any society often raise their voices against the catastrophic misfortunes a waged war brings — artists in particular. The phenomenal works in Adeela Suleman’s solo show Allegory of War on display at Birmingham Arts Centre, UK (from 16th July to 9th Oct 2022) poignantly yet beautifully utter her upheld concerns. The name of the exhibition may be borrowed from a Baroque oil painting from 1649 by the artist Jan Brueghel the Younger; Suleman seems to perceive her work through the lens of the Indo-Persian legacy of miniature painting, narrative building & storytelling, connecting her ethical concerns weaved and hammered through meticulous aesthetics. Suleman uses beauty to make the messages ‘palatable’, realising her performances of criticism through this intellectual strategy, which is reflected through every piece of work — discretely and pronounced simultaneously. Adeela Suleman, a Pakistani-born artist of international recognition, is well recognised for her exploration of social and political themes, notably the connections between past and present acts of violence in Karachi, Pakistan, her hometown.
A couple of hand-painted, oval-shaped ceramic plates, framed around with thick ovalish blocks of reclaimed wood, retain the traditional Indo-Persian schematic of blending faces and figures into two-dimensional planes. Arbitrarily, the first miniature, titled By the River, seems like a union of some men, women, a horse and a camel; the usual landscape with green leafy plants and trees, a few colourful royal tents and marquees. Though on a closer look, suddenly, a lot of grisly sliced heads appear, dropped everywhere. Few men become very powerful at once with swords in their hands; few as prisoners of war, and a couple of women by the river can be ostensibly seen. The parallel painting, titled I Die Unvanquished, shows the ruler on a horse observing the plundered muskets. The rage seems to have stopped, and some liaison is in progress. Viewing both the artefacts collectively gives the illusion that images are printed on film negative mounted on the metal spool and slowly moving frame by frame.
The following work, titled History will Erase Itself, shows another interesting play of visual strategy. Seven meat cleavers (found and painted over) are displayed in a row, which shows blurred photographic evidence of various scenes of war and unrest. The hybrid with the war imagery and the meat cleavers denotes the violent and devastating incidents within the artist’s socio-political landscape. Documenting armed conflict’s consequences on people and places is one of the subgenres of war photography. These photographers occasionally lose their lives while attempting to withdraw their images from the battlefield.
A massive installation juxtaposed with brass and copper smithereens against a grey wall — used as an open, borderless canvas titled Memory May Be a Paradise II represents a Theatre-of-War, from various eras without any particular itinerary. Using a repoussé technique, pitted figures from combatants and artillerymen on foot, heavy cavalry fighting on horseback, and chieftains on elephants surrounded by a clueless, threatened and scattered herd of deer — seemingly attacked by tigers, numbs off one’s mind momentarily. Numerous indigenous trees, plants and a few date palms — a tree of life, represent the diverse roots of the Mughal army from Persia, Arabia, Turkia, and Central Asia to the home-grown sepoys. Men are fighting with sabre hilts, swords, long-shafted projectiles — elastic bows and spears, protecting themselves with shields, wearing mail and plates armour as an additional safety layer.
A few heavy cannons on wheels behind the little shrubs remind one of the texts about gunpowder warfare systems. Aerial bomber planes flying over and above this entire battlefield, extensively bombing — a few snow-capped alps and mountains and a few free-floating clouds one layer beneath. This laborious yet ornamented presentation deals with strenuosity and supplely challenges of the artist’s materials, all carried out at her factory workshop in Karachi, which revives vanishing crafts through contemporary practices — augmenting life and its animated ephemerality.
The same gets discerned from a ginormous piece of tapestry with upstaged drapes on both sides. ‘A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and the invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden’ (Arthur Adamov). In this particular piece of Suleman’s work, an old tradition of play as a thoughtful source of narrative construction is achieved through the traditional crafts of appliqué works conferring joy, immense pain and defeat, which translates from symbolic illustrations to literal manifestations. Suleman ornamented and embellished the tapestry with hand embroidery, beads and sequins. It’s appealingly surrealist without negotiating the Indo-Persian props.
Harbingers of Death is an impressive installation comprising sound work and plastic crows, each with a slightly different pose. By allowing the viewer to enter its sinister interior, this newly commissioned interactive sculpture provides an inside-out experience. One experiences an overwhelming sense of presentiment when standing and listening to the loud caws inside the multi-tiered wooden chamber — the hexagonal prism-shaped structure, with a broad base on the floor and a narrow top-cut with fourteen isles on which 444 crows have been arranged. There are entrances carved out on two opposing sides.
Observing, every crow wears a neck tag made of copper with a different number inscribed from KFK-1 to KFK-444. KFK denotes the subsequent work titled Killing Fields of Karachi. Crows are considered an omen of bad things in mythology and superstition. ‘For Suleman, they are part of everyday life in Karachi, where they can move around mirroring the actions of the city’s human inhabitants, uniting in times of difficulty and as the ultimate scavengers to relish the flesh of abandoned carcasses and to loot and plunder to survive in the harsh realities of the city.’ (Jenine McGaughran, The Curator).
Suleman’s concluding segment for this solo show is Killing Fields of Karachi, which pays homage to a young boy Naqeebullah Mehsud, who was killed in the extra-judicial killings resulting from an alleged police encounter in Karachi in 2018. The irony is that in 2019, a Pakistani anti-terrorism court declared Naqeebullah and the three other persons murdered with him innocent. An installation, All Hell Breaks Loose, consists of five concrete tombstones with wilted metal flowers as a symbol of commemoration and photographs attached as a grievance. Four show the dreadful segments from the site of the police encounter; the fifth image is of Quaid-e-Azam, perhaps a silent protest, as he wouldn’t have dreamt of this Pakistan, in which we all experience violence of every scale and intensity daily.
The film narrates an unbearable & heart-wrenching story from the tearful eyes of an older man, who happens to be a father of an innocent Naqeebullah Mehsud. A couple of pictures were painted on metal plates with enamel, sprayed with an even, and hung on the wall with a table lamp lighting up the book. The word Indictment is written as a metaphor to bring attention to the formal charge or accusation of a serious crime against Naqeebullah Mehsud.
Another oval-shaped painting over a found ceramic tray represented an incident when Suleman’s four hundred forty-four small concrete tombstones and a video displayed as part of the Karachi Biennial 2019 were controversially destroyed and removed by state officials.
A.C. Grayling emphatically quotes Henry Miller’s finding, ‘Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life, and suggests that most people never get to the second half of the sentence.
An adjunct addition to the show, a massive tapestry piece known as the Adeela Suleman Community Tapestry is also displayed at the Terrace Gallery; This beautiful tapestry was created in Birmingham through a partnership between Suleman, Ranbir Kaur, and regional stitch-and-appliqué artists employing traditional Pakistani textile embellishment methods and materials. The women interpreted Adela’s instructions as reflecting the traditions practised by women in the artist’s native province of Sindh, Pakistan. In this collective creation, they shared the stories and skills woven into the layers of fabric. The women worked together at the tree using donated textiles & materials, a garment often worn by women to represent Birmingham’s diverse community. The figures surrounding the tree represent lethargic & languid soldiers who have abandoned their duty to guard it, symbolising the absence of those tasked with keeping citizens safe in Adeelas’s hometown of Karachi, Pakistan. Each participant drew soldiers under various influences, including traditional miniature paintings inspired by Adela’s artwork and current global events, including the conflict in Ukraine.
Allegory of War is supported by Art Fund, Henry Moore Foundation, John Feeney Charitable Trust, The Radcliffe Trust, Eversheds Sutherland and Players of the People’s Postcode Lottery and presented as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival.