Huma Mulji’s recent show titled The Country of Last Things at the Koel Gallery, Karachi, consisted of a series of images photographed over the years in Lahore Cantonment. The photographs bring to light ordinary people Mulji came across in her day-to-day life such as the baker Karamatullah, the majority non-Muslim sanitary workers and batmen assigned to army officers. The artist documents her interactions with them by photographing the subjects, recording conversations and acquiring used objects from them.

In ‘A study of equilibrium’, sanitary workers have been photographed sideways riding a bicycle, balancing their long bamboo poles on their shoulders while navigating through the city. Mulji wipes off the background with white paint to create a non-place, an unrecognisable space through which the workers move. All images are almost uniformly composed accentuating the long arc of the bamboo pole, the cyclist and the shape of his vehicle. This work also incorporates screen prints of actual newspaper recruitment advertisements that called for only non-Muslim sanitary workers to apply and an apology issued later stating that Muslims could also apply.

The work ‘Conversations with Karamatullah’ focuses on the artist’s almost daily exchange while buying bread. Mulji has presented some photographs of the man, his bakery and minimal extracts from conversations that she had with him. The installation included a broken plastic chair with a taxidermy bird resting on its back. Even though the artist makes no statements, the work evokes a sense of a quiet place, of loss and acceptance.

Huma Mulji works with a dystopian framework and references Paul Auster’s book In the Country of Last Things set in a city where everything is in a perilous position

Living in Lahore Cantonment, one comes across remnants of the colonising forces as evident in the names of areas such as Cavalry Ground and Royal Artillery Bazaar. Over the years these places have acquired new identities and meanings. In ‘Dry cleaners’ series Mulji conveys a reminder of the present oppressive forces with roots in the past, the presence of a ‘batman’ who serves an army officer. In the photographs, these Batmen can be seen carrying out different chores for their officers, including transporting their pressed uniforms on foot or on bicycle while chatting on their cell phones.

Mulji works with a dystopian framework and with reference to Paul Auster’s book In the Country of Last Things set in a city where everything is in a perilous position; this imaginary city changes so fast that one has to constantly make life adjustments and decisions for survival. The artist observes Pakistan through a similar lens where a shift towards capitalist dream coupled with extremism and violence has crushed the existing nameless entities and places such as Karamatullah and his bakery.

The artist does not shy away from raising ethical concerns about her work; she says that artists are at a risk of becoming native informers when they make art based on one-dimensional narratives of troubled regions. She raises her concern about what is a valid subject and take or position towards a subject, and what right does one have to talk about life of others and make it into art. For this reason her approach has steadily moved towards producing work which is quiet and ordinary rather than spectacular.

Mulji delves into the idea of taking a fictional route to speak about truths that are cumbersome. It is the play of fact with fiction that facilitates creation of multi-perspectives and quest for truth — encountering each thing as if we had never known it before.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 28th, 2016