Artist Adeel uz Zafar’s Hell, Purgatory and Paradise show, exhibited at the Fost Gallery in Singapore recently, is yet another spin on Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy. One of the great classics of world literature The Divine Comedy spans Dante’s journey through the three afterlives of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Throughout the poem, Dante refers to people and events from classical and Biblical history and mythology, the history of Christianity and Europe of the mediaeval period up to and including his own day. Exploring powerful sentiments of love, hate, anger, fear, joy, anxiety and bewilderment on an individual and universal scale this poem encourages reflection on human behaviour in all its manifestations.

The Divine Comedy’s metaphorical language has inspired European masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli, Eugène Delacroix, William Blake and Auguste Rodin, among many others. The work has influenced music, novels, films, mobile apps, video games and most recently the crime and mystery film Inferno. Currently Dante’s concepts are transcending Western traditions and finding resonance in diverse contemporary cultures, belief systems and political issues.

Zafar’s art concepts source the environment which prompted Dante to pen The Divine Comedy. The poet lived in a restless age of political conflict between popes and emperors and of strife within the Italian city states. Relating Dante’s commentary on the religious and political divide, anarchy, turmoil and instability that plagued Italy in the 14th century with the current domestic chaos and global flux, Zafar reimagines Hell, Purgatory and Paradise from a personal point of view. Unlike the thrilling, figurative, pictorially rich art generally associated with this poem, the artist opts to illustrate a stark monochrome landscape of mountains, celestial bodies and clouds. He makes elaborate use of smoke, air, fire and light to build the required atmosphere of a blazing inferno, volcanic eruption and a luminous state of calm.

Adeel uz Zafar’s emphasis on the intangibles prompts a reread of Dante’s descriptive characterisation of the hereafter

‘The Purgatory Mountains’ (Polyptych), by far the most picturesque of his artworks, comprise a series of seven mountains in various stages of unrest eventually culminating in a volcanic eruption. ‘The Twilight’, a quadriptych of cosmic bodies and the ‘Crest’ diptych are visually unexciting but invite scrutiny of the technical expertise they entail. The sublime is symbolised through wisps of clouds in the ‘Ascension’ diptych.

Three mock sacred books with foil-stamped gold faux leather covers (red, black and green) placed on pedestals comprised the sound installation section. The pages of sacred scripture were inscribed with the artist’s signature gauze mesh in varied undulations. According to Zafar the installation sound effects centred on jarring notes of scratching lines, recorded during the process of scraping the images, to encourage viewers/listeners to question and probe the unspoken and intangible references associated with the main subject.

Zafar made his mark in the art milieu with his innovative technique of scratching vinyl surfaces coated with thickened black paint to build massive trajectories of grey/black linear textures that eventually materialised into his magical gauze bandage weave. Other than the gauze /mesh pattern it was his tongue-in-cheek critique inherent in his large, subverted images of iconic toy characters swathed in this weave that symbolised his signature. By substituting his comic toy imagery with harsh mountainous landscapes, in this show, he not only experiments with another vocabulary but also manages a mood shift from his usual witty commentary towards a grim, austere discourse.

While he retains his etching technique there is a drastic change in scale from outsized to miniature. The small size and abstruse compositions demand concentrated, up-close viewing. The covert nature of his imagery prompts a revisit of Dante. In his epic poem Dante is endlessly inventive and descriptive in the characterisation of his subjects. Zafar’s art emphasises the intangible aspects of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Considering and weighing this perspective and examination of the artist’s novel technique and facility with the line are the most engaging aspects of the show.

“Hell, Purgatory and Paradise” was displayed at the Fost Gallery in Singapore from September 22 to November 19, 2017

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 26th, 2017