Adeela Suleman: In the Extreme

By Tan Siuli

For Asia Pacific Triennial (APT), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)

The theme of violence runs deep in Adeela Suleman’s oeuvre. As the artist shares, ‘my interest is in violence and how violence provides pleasure and how it is embedded into our very own landscape’. [1] Suleman came to miniature painting by way of her research on war and conflict in Islam and the predominant visual documentation in her part of the world was to be found in miniature painting. [2] Retaining the delicacy of line and bejewelled lyricism in this traditional art form, her vignettes are quotations from works of Mughal miniature, reworked into beautiful but disquieting compositions. The eye, traversing the rhythmic curves of the landscape, with its undulating plains and hillocks, also takes in the mounds of dead bodies piled atop each other. Bright accents of red, spurting from headless figures, punctuate an otherwise bucolic landscape. In another work, a melee of drowned corpses echoes the arcs in a crescendo of waves. Here, aesthetics and ornamentation function as a kind of ‘screen’ to deflect the eye from overt violence but at the same time—disturbingly—also render it ‘acceptable’.

Miniature painting from Pakistan has enjoyed a contemporary revival in recent years. Artists such as Suleman engage with this tradition and its conventions less to invoke the romance of a nostalgic past, but as a means of critical commentary. Many of Suleman’s earlier works feature figures taken from iconic works of Mughal miniature, repainted onto plates with their original backgrounds removed, or else set into a different miseen-scène. On occasion, a recognition of the source material adds a new layer of understanding, as narratives of betrayal and tragedy come into play. A scene of courtly love, for instance, is transformed by the artist into a tableau of violence and reciprocal treachery.

Adeela Suleman, 'Sinking in the past', 2019, found vintage ceramic plate with enamel paint and top coat with lacquer, 13.75 x 11.5 cm

In other works, Suleman collages figures from various sources. Unmoored from their original contexts, they give the impression that one corpse is interchangeable with another; one battle is just like any other. One receives a similar impression from the body of work at APT, where it is difficult to discern a narrative or rationale for the violence taking place. While traditional Mughal miniature was often commissioned to fête the conquests and achievements of its emperors, Suleman’s paintings stress instead the depravity of violence and conflict— one that is senseless, and deeply endemic.

My interest is in violence and how violence provides pleasure and how it is embedded into our very own landscape.

True to the miniature tradition, these scenes of violence are painted on a delicate scale, on vintage plates thrifted from Karachi’s second-hand markets. These plates are often purchased as décor for the home or for actual use, and the scalloped edges which frame their painted centres recall the tradition of decorative borders in Mughal art. Suleman’s choice of medium for her paintings introduces a tension between the registers of high art and kitsch, as well as the disturbing implication of violence made palatable, where scenes of bloodletting are framed and served up on domestic objects. Here, violence has seeped insidiously into the home, suggesting a certain desensitisation (perhaps through the constant barrage of media images), as well as a commentary on the prevalence of violence in the artist’s socio-political milieu.

Adeela Suleman, installation view for the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial (APT10), 2021, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane. Photo: J Ruckli

Suleman has addressed the latter through another related project, which similarly recalls the aesthetics of both popular street art and the sublime apogee of South Asian art and architecture. 'I Don’t Want To Be There When It Happens', 2013 – ongoing, is a chandelier comprising hundreds of linked, hand-beaten tin birds. The detailed metalwork references both the vernacular art of chamakpatti in urban Karachi, as well as the finely worked repoussée silverware of the Mughal courts. The artist intended the work to be a monument and memorial for lives claimed by violence in her native Karachi, with each bird standing in for each death reported in the media. However, the escalating numbers of dead reported soon outpaced studio production. Resembling a suit of chainmail armour, the installation recalls heroic epics and scenes of battle, as well as their implications of violence and bloodshed. Lit from within, the ‘chandelier’ casts its shadows around its space and audiences are enmeshed in its shadowy subtext of death and violence. At the same time, the beauty and rhythmic

patterning of light and shadow on the walls evoke an elevated, transcendental environment, bringing to mind the effect of the jali screens in Mughal architecture such as Humayun’s tomb and the Taj Mahal.

Suleman’s works are, in many ways, a commentary on human nature and the culture of her home country, ‘where extremes co-exist’.

The tension of Suleman’s works hinges on the dichotomy between a certain romanticised ideal of Pakistan and its artistic and cultural heritage—and the often brutal reality of what its citizens and artists experience on a daily basis. From the heights of technical refinement and breath-taking beauty to senseless violence, Suleman’s works are, in many ways, a commentary on human nature and the culture of her home country, ‘where extremes co-exist’. [3] It is darkly indicative of the ‘pessimism apparent in Pakistani subjectivity, derive(d) from political instability, corruption and military oppression’. [4]

Adeela Suleman, 'I don’t want to be there when it happens' (detail), 2013-17, hand-beaten stainless steel (repoussé), iron and bulb, dimensions variable. Photo: Ng Wu Gang

Drawing on motifs and conventions from a rich artistic tradition, Suleman offers audiences at home and abroad an evocative and intimate aperture to contemplate the poles of human existence and achievement.

Exhibition: Adeela Suleman, December 4 - April 25 2022

Footnotes:

[1] Personal communication with the artist, 22 November 2018. Ibid.

[4] See: N. Lankarani, ‘Going His Own Way, A Pakistani Artist Arrives’, New York Times, 13 Oct, 2010.

[3] Whiles, 'Miniature Manoeuvres: Tradition and Subversion in Pakistani'

[4] Contemporary Art, 2006. PhD thesis, London: School of Oriental andAfrican Studies. Pg. xxii