(Artist Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri)
‘Garden of Remembrance’ sounds like the Garden of Eden. May
be they go together for Eden is an eternal remembrance of the things past and
lost due to human folly. Hold on! Here none is accusing a woman who has done
the deed so that the humans are force-ejected by the God. However, remembrance
of a garden definitely foretells an ouster from the places those friendly,
habitable and conflicts contained amicably. An artist hailing from erstwhile
Faizabad, which is now ‘Ayodhya’, when he names his latest exhibition as a
‘Garden of Remembrance,’ one cannot overlook the Eden from where so many humans
were ousted due to aggressive politico-cultural forces. Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri
is the artist and if his name doesn’t tell the history of a syncretic India,
his works does.
(Works by Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri)
Cultural specificity and the linguistic uniqueness make
Sarvat Jafri’s works a bit dense despite the simplistic format of clay tablets
that he has chosen for making them. The Urdu script that has now been become a
byword for the classical, cultural, North-Indian Muslims, is deliberately used
for questioning or rather problematizing the very same identity fixation. Urdu,
a language of North India was never an Islamic language till Devnagari script
got Hindu overtones. True the language was the medium of finesse and
sophistication, of poetry and love, of intoxication and dreams, and a
cosmopolitan life. Perhaps, all these virtues were present in the Islamic life
of the North, especially in the Audh region, the Nawabi courts there. Sarvat
Jafri belongs to one of the Nawab families, keeping its sophistication of
language, manners and literary and artistic cultures intact against all odds.
(Works by Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri)
The general mood of Sarvat Jafri’s works is of mourning.
Perhaps, it’s my misreading for the artist may be celebrating his culture
especially in a time when a name could invoke suspicion and a particular food
could land someone in Jail. In a country where justice is skewed and mobs
deliver blind justice in the streets celebrating a bygone culture which has
been alienated by force of the dominant religious and political discourse could
be seen as blasphemy so I do not dare to say it as a celebration but a
mourning, a silent and elegant one, like a piece of mournful gazal sung in a
moonlit night when the archangel brought the God’s messages to the human
beings. Silent mourning itself is an act of defiance; Umberto Eco says that
when everyone is making noise, silence is rebellious. Sarvat Jafri’s works
intend such a silent rebellion.
(Works by Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri)
Though that is a critic’s interpretation based on the
political facts and contextual details of Faizabad which is now Ayodhya, as a
resident of the place the artist, Sarvat Jafri does not feel the heat and dust,
and mistrust that the people from elsewhere feel upon hearing the news from the
district especially after the demolition of Babri Masjid on 6th
December 1992 and now after the Supreme Court verdict of giving away the disputed
space to the Ramajanmabhoomi Trust for building the temple. Sarvat Jafri says
that the discord among the people is not obvious; people in the district try to
pull it off with equanimity and cordiality. None openly shows any hostility.
But the mutual mistrust has been sown and the political parties thrive on it.
Hence, for an artist from a community that is held under suspicion, the best
way is to fall back on what the best that the culture could offer and show that
a simple flower could bring a smile on a ruthless rogue’s face; that is the
grace of simplicity.
(Works by Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri)
Unpacking Sarvat Jafri’s imageries is a bit difficult for as
I mentioned above they are cultural specific and linguistically bound. However,
the works remind the viewer of the collective unconscious of culture that we
all share and the deep rooted understanding of the syncretic nature of India,
and that re-awakening to that dawn of understanding is the beginning of recognizing
the image repertoire created by Sarvat Jafri. He draws from the subtle stories
of Sufism and the Quranic teachings. These stories have found their ways into
various cultures, taking various forms and narratives so that the Semitic
nature of certain religions do not look so strange; if at all the language has
grown unfamiliar that is because of the slow removal it from the official
dealings. Urdu finds its continued life in selected pockets and perhaps Sarvat
Jafri’s works are one such avenue where the language and its cultural nuances
could find an abode in the visual realm.
(Works by Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri)
Sarvat Jafri’s family has been the poets who sang at the
courts. Spontaneous in versification and elegant and mesmerizing in imageries
these poets had created the sonic ambience of society and it took a long time
for the dominant religion to overpower it with the wild beating of drums and
blowing of conch shells. Sarvat Jafri’s works are the silent vignettes of
history. The choice of the medium is quite noticeable because the meaning of
life is so close to the earth and the Sufi philosophy that pervades in the
cultural make-up of the artist speaks of the journeys of man on the earth. God’s
words and healing power came through these tablets. And on this
mitti/clay/earth, Sarvat Jafri etches the memories of a city that once
flourished in full glory of the Awadhi culture. He does not show the ruins;
instead he gives the suggestions of the phantom edifices eaten away by time and
man. He has also created Urdu alphabets using rickshaw rims, suggesting the
community’s dependence on the rickshaw business. Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri’s works
belong to a different class of contemporary art; a class of art that does not
speak of urban glossy surfaces, war, migration and money. It deals with a
history and it’s a struggle against forgetting.
-JohnyML
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