WEAVING IDENTITIES - THE PAST OF OUR PRESENT

By Durriya Kazi

A Flower From Every Meadow curated by Dr. Nasreen Askari, brings together a mesmerizing collection of woven and embroidered clothing and fabrics from all over Pakistan. One of the most spiritually uplifting exhibitions, not least because of the ‘why now’ factor, it is a timely reminder of the meadow we now occupy that we have covered with plastic bags and rags of mass produced clothing.

It asks the question “Is this our past or does it have a place in our future?” Dr Askari leads us to conclude the latter by inviting a select group of contemporary fashion designers to pay homage to the textiles with their own designs. Ethical Fashions originally the brainchild of Bibi Russell, has been adopted by many of Pakistan’s fashion designers in varying degrees. This ensures a continuity of traditional skills and creates a space for a Pakistani identity in the fashion industry.

However as a cautionary thought, the conclusion of Kala Raksha in Gujrat India,  was that ‘commercialization insidiously eroded the artisans' sense of aesthetics and self worth’.  While Fashion created commercial opportunities for artisans, it also ironically threatened cultural heritage. In 2005, Kala Raksha responded by founding Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya, the first design school for artisans, as a sustainable solution for the survival of craft traditions. However, perhaps that is just calling a rose by another name. An intervention is always an intervention.

A Flower From Every Meadow  very emphatically shows dress and textiles as being so much more than skill and creativity. Clothing is an identifier of region, tribe or ethnic group, family, social hierarchy and of course individual personality. The colours, the embroidery motifs, the yards of cloth used, as well as how and when the dress is worn can be read as a cultural and psychological text.  The embroidery on a trousseau created over many years by a young woman demonstrates her creativity, intelligence and personality. It’s what she brings to her marital relationship. Each piece is unique, with subtle innovations, like handwriting. It also feeds back into the evolution of a community and a region. Eg. As one of the works on display, a horse’s head dress where shells are replaced by white buttons.

Nature is never very far from these textiles. The dyes used – madder, indigofera, turmeric, pomegranate skins; the motifs – peacocks, fruit, nuts and flowers of the region. Some romantic like the neem leaf, mango, lightning, rams horns, and  some quirky and humourous like billi buto (cats face), kutay payr (dogs paw) and even thorns that warn the outsider to be careful.

One of the main victims of modernity has been nature. Language was always closely linked with nature. Colours used to be called baigani, jamni, tarboozi instead of purple and shocking pink. Embroidery with gold and silver thread was called ganga jamna. Songs were about the nehar wala pul, chaudvi ka chand, standing below a neem tree. On one of my visits to the Vice Chancellor’s office  on a particularly hot day, I greeted the guard and said by way of conversation ‘ Its really hot today’. Instead of the usual complaints about load shedding he said, yes, fasal achi pakay gi (the crops will ripen well).

In the rooms of Mohatta Palace nature is given its due place. As soon as you enter the exhibition, three workshops set the context: Shafiq Soomro’s ajrak printing, Rab Dino’s bandhani tie dying, and Shahid Mallah’s khes loom, each with labelled natural dyes, and materials gathered from the region. This activity creates an awareness of the complexity of producing everyday clothing that poverty and lack of resources notwithstanding, are deemed important enough to warrant the love and effort taken to produce these textiles.

An idea of the spiritual nature of the work can be gathered from this quote by a young Kachi woman “It took many hours of tortured stitching before I began to appreciate the relationship between needle size, cloth texture, and stitch fineness. It wasn't until much later that I realized my efforts to stitch finely and evenly were being hindered by my reliance on sight. I discovered, quite by accident, late one afternoon as the sun was setting and the light was growing dim, that my stitching improved as I was forced to trust my sense of touch and the rhythms”.

Walking into the exhibition rooms at Mohatta Palace, I was conscious of the connectivity of not only the exhibits but also the architecture, especially the tiled floors whose warn earthy colours and designs were in some silent conversation with the textiles displayed on the walls. I easily imagined small lantern lit rooms with women huddled after a 15 hour day threading a needle and stitching motifs of quiet serenity or lanes resounding with the rhythmic clatter of looms, the dull thud of blocks  weaving and printing.

The textiles on display are from private collections and while representing a wide region from Chitral and Swat to the far reaches of Sindh and Baluchistan, it only touches the enormous scale and variety of textiles in Pakistan. 80% of the embroidery stiches of South Asia are said to be in the region that is now Pakistan. Pakistan is the only country in the world producing all four commercially known silks - mulberry, tasser (tussore), eri and muga. The earliest example of Indigofera comes from the Indus Valley Civilization (3300 -1300 BC)

The calmness of the patiently layered fine single threads of gujjh , the energy of the Baluchi gidaan woven tents and, in between, the Ludi shawls of Tharparker, felt pattu coats of Chitral the farasi of Sindh, the khurzeen of Baluchistan, the lungi or turbans cloths of Kalat and Bahawalpur, the ghagros, the doshalo and chupri shawls, magical names that reveal so many worlds that remain invisible in our cacophonous urgent lives.

Two installations, a hujra from Kohistan and a Baluchi gidaan tent, give us a miniscule insight into the daily life of artisan communities, most probably endangered in their own regions. Rarely seen Baluch textiles are provided by the artist Akram Dost, whose PhD is an invaluable document of the textiles of Baluchistan. Another special display is a Kohistani 525 panel Jumlo or dress and choprai shawl that inspired Sheila Paine’s romance with textiles of Asia.

Enigmatic in this rich tapestry of colour and pattern is a white burqa, finely embroidered in white silk thread a sentinel reminiscent of a marble sculpture. A reminder of the dichotomy of hiding and revealing but also evoking a nostalgia for the simple burqa replaced now by hijabs and chadors of the middle and near east origins in a post Zia era.

The exhibition subtly culminates in the work of contemporary designers who were invited to respond to the traditional textiles: Rizwan Beyg, Bunto Kazmi, Maheen Khan, Faiza Samee, Nilofur Shahid, Sonya Battla, Shamaeel Ansari, Sana Safinaz and Khadi whose intelligent and creative designs have each kept the textile crafts alive and relevant.

Rizwan Beyg established workshops for women artisans nine years ago. Bunto Kazmi’s exquisite pictorial embroideries evoke Mughal finesse that created exquisite fabrics poetically called  baft hawa (woven air), abe rawan (running water) and shabnam (morning dew). Maheen Khan has as can be expected, taken a step further by creating a new label inviting individual designers to commission work directly from the silk weavers of Banares in Karachi. 

Textiles is Pakistan’s oldest trade finding its way from Egypt to China, until the British Raj banned all textile production with its many Limitation Acts to corner the market for its own textile mills. Industry was severely affected and reduced to exporting raw materials, but as in so many other areas of customs and culture, the village was thankfully spared.

William Morris’ warning that “the Indian or Japanese craftsman may no longer ply his craft leisurely, working a few hours a day, in producing a maze of strange beauty on a piece a cloth: a steam engine is set a-going at Manchester“, may after all, be proved wrong.

N. Chaudhri, in his book Culture in the Vanity Bag says, a change of clothes is regarded as a desertion of the former self, a ‘transfer of cultural allegiance”. While men in general in Pakistan have adopted western dress, the women have kept traditional clothing alive, maintained their ‘cultural allegiance’. Emma Tarlo in her book ‘Clothing Matters’ reminds us that clothing especially in urban centres of South Asia, is now a matter of choice.  A Flower From Every Meadow invites viewers to consider their choices.

The message of this exhibition is:  the past is still present, still relevant, still a strong inspiration. As an artist, the importance of this exhibition for me lies in its invitation to repossess and author our own cultural narrative.