Fractured Alchemy

2024

Fractured Alchemy, ink drawings on vellum collaged on gold leaf on Arches watercolor paper, 68 x 48 in. each

In Urdu, the same word is used for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ (کل | kul). Time fundamentally differs from the Eurocentric ‘temporal imaginary’ as linear. Time exists in spaces between—between people, between human and nonhuman energies—not individual but shared. In contrast, kul reveals a temporal sensibility that is fluid: future and past are coalesced, overlayed and etched into each other, forming new potential worlds and temporal imaginaries. As an immigrant to the US, I too live profoundly in-between. Given that my practice is about rebuilding a future from the wreckages of the past, the process entails a radical dissolution—even of my own artwork—to manifest transformation; to manifest connection.

In Fractured Alchemy, my past drawings are cut up and transfigured into new works. My collage of past and present work makes visible multilayered temporalities. My pen and ink drawings are inspired by nature in its constantly changing state. Fragments of arboreal remnants scarcely distinguishable from porous rocks and kelp unite to form new wholes. Destruction transforms into a speculative futurity of hope. I seek to manifest a future where non-exploitative lifeways thread human and nonhuman energies with the land’s spiritual vitality, free of anthropocentric hierarchies.

Collaged prints and drawings of environmentally threatened landscape across the US and Pakistan speak to my own visceral experiences of each place, carrying a piece of my personal memory life. Indefinitely evolving, these works create a larger meta narrative.

This series first came together in my speculative studio installation project, “Our Shadows Are Our Wings” (NARS, 2024)