The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

101 Ayaz Jokhio Toward the within A thousand doors and windows too, The palace has . . . but still, Wherever I might go or be Master confronts me there Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai 1 The soaring structure by Ayaz Jokhio in the Queensland Art Gallery’s Watermall takes its inspiration from this verse by Bhittai, the great Sindhi Sufi poet of the late Mughal era. Also from Sindh, and a poet himself, Jokhio considers the work a piece of ‘conceptual architecture’; a physical translation of Bhittai’s expression of the omnipresence of God. 2 As a simple geometric form, surrounded by gently flowing water, a thousand doors and windows too . . . 2009 evokes the refined beauty of Islamic architecture, with its emphasis on symmetry, repetition and spatial interplay as the means to invite contemplation. Jokhio’s work takes the shape of a roofless, octagonal room; one wall contains an arched doorway, and the other seven each feature a curved alcove. These elements suggest the mihrab , the niche built into the wall of a mosque to indicate the qibla — the direction facing Mecca, and therefore for prayer. Here, the niches face in seven directions, implying the multifariousness of God’s presence, while the identical, yet differently oriented, walls also elaborate Jokhio’s interest in what he calls ‘similarities and differences occurring at the same time and in the same thing’. 3 This interest also connects with Sufi thought, which, while maintaining Islam’s central tenet of the unity of God, also gives primacy to personal interactions with the divine. Jokhio claims to have no signature style, stating that each project is an opportunity to start at the beginning again. 4 His works have included an installation of a classroom, video documentaries, large paintings of museum wall texts and the reverse of photographs, and newsprint collages of celebrities. A recurrent medium is drawing; in a recent series, the artist employed an academic realist technique to render diptychs of ordinary objects of similar form but of vastly different function. A flat loaf of naan bread is paired with planet Earth, a ballpoint pen with a bullet, bracelets with a pair of handcuffs, and a sumo wrestler with the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki in 1945. Here, Jokhio’s interest in similarity and difference takes on the guise of one-liners, yet with wry social and political significances. Another series, 99 Self portraits 2008, comprises a drawing of the artist’s face reproduced 99 times, with each version sent to a different person to add hair and other features. 5 These were then reassembled and exhibited as a group, offering dozens of permutations of the original face and, by association, of the artist himself. Again, there is directness, lightness and humour to the work — Jokhio deliberately absolves his authorial role and taps into Duchampian tactics of appropriation and self-parody. Nevertheless, as with the diptychs, it is difficult to avoid an underlying political message, especially when viewed in the context of a contemporary world where there are great pressures to maintain a singular, fixed identity. The powerful forces of nationalism and religious fundamentalism, not only in Pakistan but across the globe, view fluid, multiple identities as suspicious, even dangerous. Indeed, if we return to Sufism, its tolerance of other faiths and individualised worship has for centuries been considered a potentially moderating force within Islam, in the face of more sectarian and authoritarian versions. However, Jokhio has said, ‘In the end I do realise that all subjects and materials are secondary. What comes first is the visual impact of the work itself as seen by the viewer’. 6 Within the context of an art exhibition, Ayaz Jokhio’s structure is, of course, primarily sculpture. From the outside, it is a monolithic white form — clearly, the detailed decoration of classical Islamic buildings is eschewed here — with its huge scale creating specific relationships with the viewer and the space around it. Yet, as in the Islamic tradition of ‘hidden architecture’, its focus is on an internal, enclosed space, in which the work truly exists ‘only when entered, penetrated and experienced from within’. 7 It is only when we walk inside the sculpture that we can see all its walls at once, with their niches fanning out in all directions, echoing Bhittai’s sublime words. Russell Storer Endnotes 1 Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689–1752) was a Sufi poet and scholar who lived in the province of Sindh, in the south-east of what is now Pakistan. Sufism is the esoteric or mystical dimension of Islam, greatly influential in the direction and spread of Islamic thought throughout the world. Sufi poets and thinkers include Rumi, Omar Khayyám and Al-Ghazali. 2 Ayaz Jokhio, email to the author, 7 May 2009. 3 Jokhio, email to the author. 4 Ayaz Jokhio artist statement, ‘Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan’, Asia Society, New York, <http://sites.asiasociety.org/hangingfire/ayaz-jokhio/ >, viewed 11 October 2009. 5 The number 99 is highly significant in Islam, with the Qu’ran describing God as having 99 attributes, known as ‘The Most Beautiful Names’. 6 Ayaz Jokhio artist statement. 7 Ernst J Grube, ‘What is Islamic architecture?’, in George Michell (ed.), Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning , Thames & Hudson, London, 1995, p.11.