The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 154 (above and opposite) Hafiz in Diaspora (details) 2021 Watercolor, gouache, gold leaf and silver leaf on old Hafiz poetry sheets and book covers / 40 sheets: 20 x 13.7cm / 23.5 x 15.3cm (each, approx.); two covers: 42 x 30cm (each) / Courtesy: The artist Travel light, because the passage is narrow. Seize the cup, because the precious life has no going back. Hafiz 1 Verses of poetry have accompanied Amin Taasha’s arduous life journey. Poems from earlier centuries have helped him navigate contemporary persecution and displacement, taught him about love and family and have become an instrument to understand the memories that inspire his art. Shirazi poet Hafiz (c.1315–90) was celebrated in his time and is now known as one of the great masters of Persian poetry. He was not only a master of the ghazal poetic form but also an influential commentator able to put verse to religion, love and morality. Hafiz created the concept of Rindī — one who has freed themselves from the conventions of normal life to devote themselves to the truth. 2 During a politically unstable and uncertain era, Hafiz delivered his poetic truth with satire, wit and candour, remaining unapologetic in calling out religious, political or personal hypocrisy. For Taasha, the complexity of Hafiz’s poetry is very relevant to his experiences and observations of living in Afghanistan. He is part of the Persian-speaking Hazara community of central Afghanistan, a population that has been persecuted for more than a century, and more recently targeted by the Taliban due to their Shi’a faith. Taasha has memories of playing around the now destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan during the Taliban regime, before his family moved to Kabul to escape oppression. He learnt carpet-making in Kabul with his siblings before studying painting and calligraphy in university. In 2009 Taasha undertook a workshop with Australian artist Khadim Ali which had a profound influence on his practice, and he began incorporating aspects of abstraction and miniature painting into his works. Taasha’s life and career took a turn after he was invited to participate in dOCUMENTA (13)’s international project at the National Gallery of Afghanistan in 2012, where his works drew the attention of authorities and he was intimidated at gunpoint before being blacklisted from exhibiting his work. He quickly sought opportunities to travel abroad, and the following year received a scholarship to study in Indonesia, living in Semarang before settling in Yogyakarta to study at the renowned Indonesia Institute of Arts (ISI). Throughout these events, Taasha has carried a book of Hafiz’s poetry that his family have owned for many years. The artist’s father, who never learnt to read and write, had dreamed his son would be able to understand the book, as it is believed if one can comprehend the complexity of the verse of Hafiz, they can read anything. 3 Taasha has used sheets of Hafiz’s poetry as the base of a vast painting project, onto which he renders symbols and motifs from his own life and the history and mythology of Afghanistan and Central Asia. He says: The greatest things happen while working on the Hafiz poetry book. Each page and each verse makes many memories come alive: things that happened from my early childhood, like playing with leftover Taliban bombs known as cluster munitions when we lived in Bamiyan, and the displacement of moving between Kabul and Bamiyan many times. It’s fascinating that the poetry of Hafiz can make me smile, make me sad, make me thankful, and make me remember many moments I had forgotten. I do feel the Hafiz poetry book itself sees and feels everything that happens around it and when I work on it, I can feel and start remembering moments and stories that make me inspired to move forward. It makes me think that at the end of every darkness there is light. 4 Taasha began selecting pages, rendering figures and motifs in watercolour over the printed poetry and applying highlights of gold, silver and copper. They capture the Gandharan Buddhist–style imagery that Bamiyan was known for; ammunition and weaponry of the Taliban; mythological characters; and historical symbols. Strewn across the motifs are strings of painted marigolds, which have held various cultural and symbolic meanings throughout history. The flower has been considered emblematic of spiritual light, as well as capable of conveying both joy and despair. As Taasha’s delicate paintings begin to merge with the calligraphic verses and aged parchment, they become a way to explore the broad history of Afghanistan’s history and culture, to try and understand and rationalise some of the challenging situations he has lived through, and find hope and love along the way. Tarun Nagesh Endnotes 1 Bahā al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, Hafiz: The Tongue of the Hidden , trans. Mojtaba Habibi Rad and Lili Habibi Rad, Candle & Fog, London, 2019, p.117. 2 The Rindī concept is complex and has been translated in different ways, but became a way Hāfiz explained his role as a poet and social commentator. See Bahā al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, p.334. 3 Amin Taasha, correspondence with the author, 2021. 4 Taasha, artist statement, 2021. Amin Taasha Born 1995, Bamiyan, Afghanistan Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia