Sketch of a fading memory II, 2006

Ruby Chishti is an installation artist and graduate of the National College of Arts, Lahore. She uses unconventional mediums to produce new meanings around the female body. Her practice explores sculpture in relation to process, embodiment and site; and refuses the routine fetishisation of art and sculpture as marketable commodities.

‘Sketch of a Fading Memory II’ (2006) is a site-specific installation. Constructed from twigs and straw, it depicts a mother and child. A direct reference to the popular art historical motif of the ‘Madonna and Child’, Chishti reconfigures this traditional image. The work is loaded with personal memories of the artist’s own relationship with her mother. The use of found material such as twigs allows the work to remain unfinished and imperfect.

Rather than claiming an eternal existence in a gallery or museum setting, this installation embraces temporality and is vulnerable to forces of nature. The crows placed around the mother and child, remind the viewer of scavengers waiting to pick apart the fragile and delicate arrangement. This quality of impermanence also reflects the ephemerality of memory.

In an interview last year, Chishti explained her practice as a conscious departure from commodification of art. “I used material that had no archival value — material that was ephemeral and brittle in nature. The body of work that emerged was in contrast with the current trends of art-making … One of the reasons why I chose to work in those materials is because I wanted to stay away from the clutches of the market.”

In this way, Chishti’s installations are not just gestures of hanging artworks in the gallery, but a critique of the practice of art-making within the institution. She enacts a refusal of the capitalist and institutional frameworks that support and exhibit the work of art and finds new possibilities for art and display.

Blemishes of times II, 2009

In other works, such as ‘Blemishes of times II’ (2009), Chishti uses discarded rags to piece together sculptures of female bodies. She critiques the art historical tendencies that associate doll making with “craft culture” and as separate form fine arts traditions. This division, which has been sustained since the early modern era, defines crafts as “technical knowledge” and art as “aesthetic / conceptual knowledge.”

Chishti’s sculptures reject this binary and focus on the everyday and socio-historical relevance of craft media. In ‘Blemishes of times II’, the female body constructed from rags is projected as protruding, deformed and ungainly. These grotesque bodies disrupt hegemonic bodily norms, refusing the process of objectification that turns the female body into commodity. This ordinary, unglamorous body stands in strong contrast to the hyper-sexualised, fetishised female bodies circulating in the media. Their heads have been replaced with taps, which Chisti explains as an attempt “to relate the female body to a vessel or a container with the system of control situated outside.”

In a more recent work, for the “Sublime” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (2014), Chishti extended her practice beyond the walls of the gallery. She transformed her sculpture into a wearable dress and stood in various public locations. This performance, titled ‘Sublime structures’, allowed the artist to radically alter the context and environment of art display and come into contact with new audiences. Rather than a finished product, her art piece literally becomes a living body, inseparable from ordinary life.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 26th, 2015

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