The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

MOHAMMED QASIM ASHFAQ Evanescence Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq’s works employ a diversity of thinking and approaches. Fusing Islamic aesthetics with contemporary visual culture, Ashfaq’s practice formulates a vision for the ‘worldliness’ of art, not unlike cultural critic Edward Said’s ‘worldliness’ of literature, 1 a style of literary criticism conceived as a holistic mode of engagement between text and the world. Ashfaq’s works are strikingly contemporary, yet they communicate the richness and complexity of visual signs rooted in the deep structures of Islamic aesthetics. Ashfaq expands upon these traditions to play with ideas of constant change and multidimensionality: his visual grammar articulates the present, heralding a ‘truly global’ aesthetic, one that connects freely with avant-garde movements around the world, while traversing historical antecedents throughout centuries. For his wall-based works, such as those presented in APT7, Ashfaq creates site-specific installations fashioned from aluminium tape in the form of ornamental patterns of interlacing geometric motifs. They involve complex and laborious processes; each ornamental pattern is designed and constructed manually, then traced directly on to the wall. The process of trimming the tape reveals the beauty of the pattern. Evoking metaphysical notions of infinity, the delicate play of light across the ‘skin’ of the tape constantly shifts between qualities of transparency and solidity, as the viewer moves around the gallery space. This deceptively fragile work melds elements of the artistic vocabularies of the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, traditional Islamic designs and edgy contemporary science fiction. References to the Bauhaus are particularly abundant in Ashfaq’s works as a movement governed by a deep belief in the optical expansiveness of the two-dimensional medium. 2 Ashfaq relates the unending expanse of light to an infinite perspective evoked by repetitive nonobjective patterning. In acknowledging Islamic visual culture as his inspiration, Ashfaq suggests: It’s as though if you look enough, you can concentrate enough to reach a higher transcendental spirituality. The patterns I make are Islamic and they inform of the idea of infinity. 3 Employing recurring nonrepresentational ornamentation, designs and patterns emerge, change, and are transfigured into other shapes. The transformative power of Islamic geometric patterning is based on the assumption that there is no fixed or stable view of the world. 4 What is usually observed as Islamic ornamentation or arabesque from a Western perspective actually elucidates an expression of constant flux in the world, signifying the inter-relationship of all creation. 5 In Islamic visual design, the constantly variable nature of a space is pursued as a value. The profuse ornamentation and symmetrical interlaced patterns are devices that can be manipulated to push geometry beyond values of mere adornment. In Sufi philosophy, and Islam generally, it is through symbols that one is awakened, is transformed, and can express a sensory pathway to the transcendent. 6 Symbols become the link between meaning and form, and it is through the invocation of symbols that one comes closer to the spiritual and attains a state of peace. Yet, Ashfaq’s politically- charged titles, such as HOW DIRTY IS YOUR GLOSSY BLACK , also draw attention to issues of race and class in contemporary Britain from the position of a young British Pakistani artist. Although Ashfaq’s formal training was in painting, he has recently gravitated towards sculpture through his maquettes. Fashioned from epoxy resin and spray-paint, their fractured angular forms and polished surfaces convey monumentality and infinity. With planar surfaces, volume and space engineered to create a dynamic tension, the sculptures are turned and poised at oblique angles, seemingly displacing the centre of gravity of each shape. The choice of black alludes to black holes and symbolises deep outer space. The synergy of the highly polished surfaces alongside the fractured planar views creates a sense of expanded physical space. Light is reflected endlessly across the points of intersection, beyond the limitations of the maquette’s surface, distorting the visual understanding of its structure. Consciousness of material is an element pervading Ashfaq’s practice. Patterns of visual experience are a significant aspect of an artist’s cultural identity. In Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq’s wall installations, the recurring geometrical patterning articulates universality, permanence and immutability. Its message is unequivocal; it speaks with the voice of the transcendent. Sushma Griffin 1 Edward Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983, p.81. 2 Hal Foster, ‘The Bauhaus idea in America’, in Achim Borchardt-Hume (ed.), From the Bauhaus to the New World , Tate Publishing, London, 2006, p.101. 3 Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq, in an interview at the Amrita Jhaveri Gallery, Mumbai, India, Jhaveri Contemporary , <http://www. amritajhaveri.com/exhibitions/past/mohammed-qasim-ashfaq/ interview>, viewed 7 February 2012. 4 Jale Nejdet Erzen, ‘Islamic aesthetics: An alternative way to knowledge’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , special issue: Global Theories of the Arts and Aesthetics, vol.65, no.1, winter 2007, p.70. 5 Erzen, p.70. 6 Erzen, p.71. 86