So guarded are the spaces where visual art is exhibited, that the art viewer becomes accustomed to and dependent on certain frameworks that fulfill a social and even political need. There are stakeholders who monitor the dynamics of ‘discourse’, and the predominant form is a ‘package’ that suits the lack of imagination of artists, gallerists and curators who fail to relate to spaces of exhibition as they exist in their architectural, structural and social contexts; to the ‘form’ that exists in the real world, in the narratives of peoples’ lived experience.

Against this backdrop, a class assignment by second year communications students at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) spoke directly and indirectly on the many aspects of contexts that exist in our experience and memory, and though unintended, relate to the making, showing and reading of art.

The assignment, titled “Memory, Reconstructed and Remembered Spaces, Letters to a Childhood Home” developed as a class project in which the visiting professor Erin Sledd and artist / teacher Ammad Tahir asked students to write a letter to a childhood home and ‘design the space’. They wrote in the brief to the students: ‘Exhibitions and exhibition spaces can be monumental, or they can be very personal and intimate. Letters and postcards — the real ones, not emails or digital greetings — are tiny exhibition spaces’. From this developed very personal letters to a house, a home, and therefore a conversation with the memory of space. It is in the creativity of this simple project that the teachers curated complex narratives of text and object, and collaborated with the students to form an interactive space within the art school. A communication project, it could easily be done by established artists, even if it was installed outside the school’s art gallery; more so a challenge to a larger viewership within the school’s fine art, textile and architecture departments. It also drew viewers from outside the school, to engage and write their own stories on their childhood home on postcards made by students.

A dynamic art project initiates an out-of-the-box approach that addresses social spaces of the past and present

Letters to addresses of previous homes were personal notes, in stamped envelopes, and placed in plastic cases on the wall inviting viewers to read and see the visuals. There was an instant connection to places that some may recall, and the rarity of reading a letter; such as reading an artist’s diary, something that has inspired artist’s books. Thoughts like visuals, in process.

One comes across personal anecdotes, some nostalgic writings, such as a letter addressed by Sheema to ‘Naz Mansion’ in Karachi, “Every morning when I woke up to your thoughtful, sleepy silence, I knew there was no place I would rather be than home / I long for one more day in your arms”. The diversity in writing was really about connections to spaces in those homes, to feelings yet to be communicated, and that in itself was its creative form.

The artist Zarina Hashmi’s album titled ‘Letters from Home’ (1991), were original letters in Urdu that were used in metal cuts. In her print album, ‘House on Wheels’, she used cast iron forms to play with the idea of a physical space and the journey from one house to another. In ‘House with Four Walls’ (1991), descriptive text such as, “The black snake came in the house”, etc. was part of the stories she was narrating.

Text as form and as source, not embellishment, can be the potential to link the personal to the social and the political. The processes of the “Letters to a Childhood Home” at IVS opened unexpected, direct and creative ways of revisiting the past, and communicated each artist’s particular sensibility and sensitivity to physical spaces of the past and present, each story within the conceptual anchor of the project.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, January 10th, 2016