By Jabeen Qadri
Horizon is Home at Articulate Studios, Lahore, Pakistan, curated by Quddus Mirza, featuring artists Abdul Haadi, Samina Hassan Laghari, Salar Marri, Seema Nusrat, and Farooq Soomro. The exhibition ran from December 23, 2024, to January 5, 2025.
Dec 24. 5.45 pm. Shalimar Town, Lahore.
I’m still not accustomed to the sun setting this early. Despite being here for almost a month, my mind is operating on my hometown’s time, and I didn’t anticipate the darkness at this hour. Or it may be that my subconscious had a better experience planned for me to view the exhibition. I retrace the steps from the last time I visited this heritage house. It was almost a year ago, but I remember it quite vividly like it was yesterday. I remember having a sore throat in winter and wearing a pink sweater and an Afghan choker, neither of which I’m carrying today. I remember there were some lights leading up to the gallery space, and people buzzing about. It seemed a different place altogether today.
“Asalam o alaikum,” I hear a voice in the pitch-black darkness, as I’m turning off my phone’s torch, seeing the entrance lit and doors open. The guard must be wondering if he greeted a real person or a ghost. I think the same about the guard.
As I enter the exhibition, it is lit up and ready, but with no people, like Marie Celeste, found in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, without a crew or passengers, but with all their belongings intact. The first two works are installed behind curtained rooms. I resisted going inside—the last thing I want is to step inside a dark room—but I find myself immediately drawn to the videos installed and forget about the dark or being alone in this aged building.
The exhibition titled Horizon is Home, curated by Quddus Mirza, is an outcome of a three-week-long residency hosted by Articulate Studios in Chitral and Lahore. The artists include Abdul Haadi, Samina Hassan Laghari, Salar Marri, Seema Nusrat, and Farooq Soomro. Horizon as a concept has been celebrated by artists across history, compositionally, conceptually, and symbolically. Mark Rothko, for instance, used horizons notoriously in his colour field paintings. They say about Rothko’s work, “This is not the kind of painting you can talk about – you have to experience it.” [1] And though formally, the horizon functions as a point of separation, a sort of groundedness, that enables the eye to see what is depicted. Yet, the eye of the soul sees beyond the separations. “You feel as though you have been captured by infinite horizons and absorbed into imaginary seas with hallucinatory hues.” In our daily occupied and chaotic lives, the eye of the soul remains quite suppressed, hidden behind the intellect. The simple act of viewing art is enough to open this suppressed sense. I feel a similar response to Horizon is Home, where my inhibitions are disrupted and I feel lost to the world of the imaginary, contemplating memory, identity, boundaries, and separations.
Inside the dark rooms, video works by Abdul Haadi and Samina Hassan Laghari greet me. I find the dialogue the works create with the building’s structure fascinating. The video projections feel like echoes of the past, the walls adorned with artists’ connection to their homelands, with environmental or geographical contexts. The dark room holds an intimacy; the exhibition soon turns into a confrontation with myself. The silence of the video works is deathly, making the projections more powerful. I feel teleported to my childhood. I notice there are fireplaces in the dark rooms; it’s an aged house after all. I wonder what stories the fireplace tells. At this point of metaphysical experience, I applaud my choice not to visit the opening of the exhibition but rather, to visit it the following day, where I could dive into the experience of the works together with the surrounding space, without human and social interruption. My social anxiety turned out to be my prize after all.
As I walk further, I find light and still images. I breathe a sigh of immense relief to see familiar monuments and figures, but the confrontation with myself continues, and I can’t escape it. I find destruction, congested houses, bougainvillea, and traffic, all reminiscent of Karachi. These are photographs by Farooq Soomro. No matter where I am, it’s a delight to find a trace of my home. Even though the artist created depictions of other cities and places, he uses the Lahore smog as a metaphor for blurry reality in contrast with a beautiful, blurry landscape of a valley from Chitral. Similarly, Salar Marri’s series of multimedia works Ambiguous Nature of Being is consumed with blurriness in imagery as well as the use of material, which takes me to another sphere of existential inquiry. I regret that to truly experience the ambiguity, I wish I hadn’t read the title of the series. What I see is the blurred boundary between the city I’m in and the city where I come from. It takes me back to my thought a day earlier: would I ever be able to see Lahore (or any other city) for what it is, or would I always compare it with home, Karachi?
Shortly after, I see models of homes arranged like apartments, made with green covers used during construction. The sculptural work by Seema Nusrat highlights the environmental damage caused as homes and trees are being replaced by buildings. I enjoy the placement of the work the most.
Just when I think of leaving, my terrors reignite as I witness Samina Hassan’s print on tracing paper. Not that it was horrible; no, it was quite the opposite. As an artist who loves using tracing paper, I was immediately hypnotised and slightly afraid. The print combines various geographical landscapes, from Sindh and Chitral, depicting the environmental damage. I could see surreal objects and figures coming together in my mind’s eye. Combined with the scale of the work, the aesthetics of the aged building, and my childhood memories already invoked earlier, it reminded me of Count Dracula’s house at the top of the mountain. The isolation felt real and near. At this point, I think of the guard who must be wondering where I went, if I am real. The last thing I want is to be locked inside. I take a final look at Samina Hassan’s print, which is challenging to articulate, so I write a few lines of poetry and leave.
Bushes take me somewhere
They itch, they scratch the edges
Blood rushes, drip by drip
A voice calls me towards it
I’m scared to go, to look in the eyes
This could be home
References
[1] Art Basel. “Mark Rothko in a New Light.” Art Basel. Accessed December 25, 2024. https://www.artbasel.com/news/restrospective-mark-rothko-fondation-louis-vuitton-paris-reveals-lesser-known-aspects-american-painter-work.