MAPPING AN ARM’S LENGTH: Body, Space and the Performativity of Drawing

Roohi Shafiq Ahmed

A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts

College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. 2013

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ABSTRACT

This research is based on the assertion that personal histories, memories and associations require conduits through which to form a viable mode of expression. Here my own body is the conduit through which I perform and record the world around me; drawing is taken as performative, building on the arguments of art curators and writers Cornelia H. Butler and . The body is a dynamic mechanism that incorporates variable of movement, occupation, and density, and the space surrounding it therefore becomes a highly charged zone of intertwined activity between the physical and the psychical. Anzieu Didier identifies this space as an area where pacts are negotiated between outside and inside, and where meaningful encounters take place between the two. It is the liminal space of the skin that bears the traces of such encounters.

From this the thesis focuses on various types of mark making between the body and its immediately surrounding spaces. It investigates the physical, historical and conceptual perception of an ‘arm’s length’, that distance between body and world. Through the performativity of drawing the research critically examines this space as measuring, mapping and covering the body in relation to gesture and form. It charts meaningful encounters between the body and space through a number of visual methods, unconventional materials and practices, including the body as both instrument and site of such performances. My resulting works are cartographies, a type of visual mapping that charts the socio-political and religious boundaries experienced by a Muslim female body in various spaces. But more than this, they also give rise to one’s ability to navigate the various boundaries that continually reconfigure the perception of a given space, time and location in relation to the body. CONTENTS

Figures ------02 Glossary ------06 Introduction ------08 Chapter One: Points of Departure ------18 Area of Investigation ------18 Body, Space and Performativity in Drawing ------21 Chapter Two: Measuring the Body ------31 ------31 Point (Nuqta) and Line (Khatt) ------33 Circle (Da-ira) and Square (Mu-raba) ------34 The Figure ------37 An Arm’s Length ------39 Chapter Three: Mapping and Covering the Body ------45 Mapping ------45 Map Making ------46 Mapping the Body: From Perfect Order to Symbolic Order - 46 Covering and Enveloping ------49 Veiling ------52 Chapter Four: Studio Practice: Research Outcomes ------55 Process ------55 Progress ------58 Research Outcomes: Discussion of Artworks ------59 Conclusion ------70 Bibliography ------73

1 FIGURES

Figure 0.1: ------09 Map of , India and Bangladesh. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bangladesh_War_of_Independence Figure 0.2: ------10 Roohi Ahmed, Hey + Meem (Urdu alphabets) = Hum (Us) – 2000. Colour pencil, ink, bitumen, and Xerox transfer on gypsum board, 20 x 30 cm Figure 0.3: ------10 Roohi Ahmed, [L to R] South Asia, Political – 2000, Geodetic Datum Unknown, 2000, colour pencil, ink, bitumen, paper and Xerox transfer on gypsum board, 72 x 46 cm each Figure 0.4: ------11 Life-drawing class taking place at the School of Art (May 2011), author’s photograph Figure 0.5: ------13 Roohi Ahmed, Karachi series, 2000. Colour pencils, inks, bitumen, paper and Xerox transfer on gypsum board, 70 x 52 cm each Figure 0.6: ------14 Roohi Ahmed, Lifeline I, 2006. Fabric, silk threads, metal, glass and velvet, dimensions variable Figure 0.7: ------15 Dervishes revolving with their outstretched arms to the rhythm of ney. Yelda Barel, Skylife, Turkish Airlines Journal No.245, Vol. 12 (2003), pg. 92 Figure 0.8: ------16 Images from an active millimeter wave body scanner. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/pi-statement-on-proposed- deployments-of-body-scanners-in-airports-0 Figure 1.1: ------19 Roohi Ahmed, Hands On series – 2011, carbon pigment and colour pencils on paper Figure 1.2: ------20 Roohi Ahmed, drawing with the body on sand, Perry Sand Hills, Wentworth, New South Wales, Australia, 2012 Figure 1.3: ------23 Aboriginal rock painting representing two hands. Silhouettes of hands as evidence of masking the rock from the sprayed paint. Carnarvon Gorge, Queensland, Australia Figure 1.4: ------24 Mike Parr, Integration 3 (Leg spiral) 1975, printed 2001, 4 gelatin silver photographs. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/99.2001.a-d/ Figure 1.5: ------24 Mike Parr, Close The Concentration Camps 2002, performance. Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://shermangalleries.shermanscaf.org.au/artists/inartists/image_pop.asp%3Fimage =341.html Figure 1.6: ------25 David Wojnarowicz, stills from A Fire in My Belly, 1986-1987, 20:55 min, color and B & W, silent, Super 8mm film on video. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/string/string-art-history-3.html Figure 1.7: ------25 Marina Abramovic, (sewn lips of Ulay) Talking about Similarity, 1976. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/string/string-art-history-3.html Figure 1.8: ------25 Lenore Tawney, In Utero, 1985, Chair and fabric. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/string/string-art-history-3.html

2 Figure 1.9: ------25 Lenore Tawney, Box of Falling Stars, 1984, cotton canvas and knotted linen thread with acrylic paint and ink, 78.8 x 175.3 x 177.8 cm., accessed 25 March 2013 Source: http://museumuesum.tumblr.com/page/111 Figure 1.10: ------26 Mona Hatoum, Corps Étranger, 1994, video installations/endoscopies. Source: http://artphalt.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/mona-hatoum-entrails-appeal/, accessed 23 March 2013 Figure 1.11: ------27 Shirin Neshat, Stripped, 1995, accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.ivorypress.com/cphoto/es/photographer/shirin Figure 1.12: ------27 Naiza Khan. Henna Hands – The March (detail), 2000, Henna paste on Wall. Accessed 23 March 2013, Source: http://www.naizakhan.com/gallery/henna-hands- site-specific-project-cantonment-railway-station-1/#!prettyPhoto[henna-hands-site- specific-project-cantonment-railway-station]/7/ Figure 1.13: ------28 Brides’ outstretched hands and feet to dry henna, accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://perfecthennadesign.blogspot.com.au, & http://hennabycolleen.wordpress.com Figure 1.14: ------28 Aisha Khalid, Conversation – 2002, double channel video 120 minutes. Accessed 23 March 2013Source: http://courses.washington.edu/femart/final_project/wordpress/ aisha-khalid/ Figure 1.15: ------29 Aisha Khalid, Larger Than Life – 2012, site-specific installation, 21x 28 feet. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://hannahleightonboyce.wordpress.com/ 2012/09/23/whitworth-art-gallery-aisha-khalid-larger-than-life/ Figure 1.16: ------29 Risham Syed, The Seven Seas – 2012, seven quilts. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.abraajcapitalartprize.com/artworks.php Figure 1.17: ------30 with my mother’s old sewing machine; stitching the Blue Field Construction (see fig. 4.14), Karachi, Pakistan, 2012 Figure 2.1: ------32 , Vitruvian Man c. 1490, pen and ink with wash over metal point on paper, 34.4 x 25.5 cm., accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.theredheadriter.com/2012/05/artist-leonardo-da-vinci-53-interesting-facts/ Figure 2.2: ------34 Calligraphic diagrams of the letters alif and ain using the proportional system based on Nuqta. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/learn/foreducators /publications-for-educators/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-two/proportional-scripts Figure 2.3: ------35 Circle and Square. Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach, Thames and Hudson, 1976. Pg. 29 Figure 2.4: ------36 Pilgrims performing tawaf around Ka’ba during Hajj, accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://blog.britishmuseum.org/category/exhibitions/hajj-journey-to-the-heart-of-islam/ Figure 2.5: ------36 Ahmed Mater, Magnetism I, photograuve- print, 2012. 62 x 81 cm. Source: http://ahmedmater.com/artwork/magnetism/prints/magnetism-photograuve-i/ accessed 23 March 2013 Figure 2.6: ------42 A Muslim impression of Jesus and Mary in a Persian miniature showing as flames. Source: http://www.eslam.de/begriffe/m/maria.htm, accessed 23 March 2013 Figure 2.7: ------42 Seated Buddha from Gandhara, Pakistan, about 2nd - 3rd century AD. (c) British Museum, London, accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.britishmuseum.org/learning/schools_and_teachers/sessions/sddc_ multimedia_magic.aspx/

3 Figure 2.8: ------42 Fifteen roundels in three columns with saints and their attributes and the Virgin and Christ child above center, 1500-1525 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Accessed 23 March 2013, Source: http://www.britishmuseum.org/system_ pages/beta_collection_introduction/beta_collection_object_details.aspx?objectId= 1498234&partId=1&searchText=saints/ Figure 2.9: ------42 Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaykh to Kings From the St. Petersburg Album signed by Bichitr, ca. 1620. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1600_1699/jahangir/ jahangirsufi/jahangirsufi.html/ Figure 2.10: ------42 Enlèvement d'Europe, painted by French artist Nöel-Nicolas Coypel in 1726-1727, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/Europe Figure 2.11: ------42 Kaali or Durga Seated on Shiva Surrounded by a flaming nimbus, Ganesh, Skanda & Devotees. Accessed 27 March 2013, Source: http://laxmibronzein.monkport.com/kali_durga6.html Figure 2.12: ------43 Diagram of Edward T. Hall's personal reaction bubbles (1966), showing radius in feet. Accessed 23 March 2013, Source: http://psychology.about.com/od/ nonverbalcommunication/ss/understanding-body-language_8.htm Figure 2.13: ------43 Two people not affecting each other's personal space. Accessed 23 March 2013, Source: http://www.findingtheworld.com/why-everyone-has-a-personal-space/ Figure 2.14: ------43 Reaction of two people whose personal spaces are in conflict. Accessed 23 March 2013. Source: http://www.findingtheworld.com/why-everyone-has-a-personal-space/ Figure 2.15: ------44 Re-contextualisation of spaces turns an arm’s length of a distance into luxury Figure 3.1: ------49 Masaccio, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (detail), ca.1425, Branacci Chapel. Accessed 23 Mar 2013. Source: http://historylists.org/art/10-finest-works-of-the- early-italian-renaissance-art.html Figure 3.2: ------49 Adam and Eve (detail) as depicted in Manafi al-Hayawan (Useful Animals), 1294-99, Iran. Accessed 23 Mar 2013, Source: http://www.picturesfromhistory.com/index.gallery.php?gid=20&img=376 Figure 3.3: ------49 Jewish rug depicting Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, made in Marbadiah Carpet Factory, Jerusalem, 1920s (cotton and wool)/Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library. Accessed 20 Mar 2013. Source: http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/104321/ Figure 3.4: ------50 A sleeping bag for women. Accessed 20 March 2013. Source: http://gearjunkie.com/rei-flash-34-womens-sleeping-bag Figure 3.5: ------50 Space Shuttle space suit, 1983. Accessed 20 March 2013, Source: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/spacesuits/historygallery/shuttle- index.html Figure 3.6: ------50 A dead man in Kafan (Islamic shroud). Accessed 20 March 2013. Source: http://nuralhayat.tumblr.com Figure 3.7: ------51 William Hunter, Table 11 & 12, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. Accessed 20 March 2013. Source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/hunterw_home.html

4

Figure 3.8: ------51 Monarch butterfly chrysalis about to hatch. Accessed on 20 Mar 2013. Source: http://texasbutterflyranch.com/2012/01/13/butterfly-faq-pros-and-cons-of-tropical- milkweed-and-what-to-do-with-a-winter-monarch-butterfly-caterpillar-or-chrysalis/ Figure 3.9: ------52 Veiling in different cultures and traditions. Accessed 20 March 2013. Sources: http://www.salebridaldresses.com,http://www.thephotographer.in/darkroom/showthread. php?t=576, http://civicdilemmas.facinghistory.org/content/brief-history-veil-islam Figure 3.10: ------53 The custom of veiling observed in the last two weeks of Lent in Catholic tradition. Accessed 20 March 2013 Source: http://orbiscatholicussecundus.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/catholic-culture-veiling- statues-on.html, http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009_03_01_archive.html Figure 3.11: ------54 Roohi Ahmed, Covering, Enveloping, and Veiling, Karachi, Pakistan, 2012 Figure 4.1: ------55 Roohi Ahmed, 2011. Record of performance, images were dissected and stitched again digitally as experiments. Karachi, Pakistan Figure 4.2: ------56 Roohi Ahmed, performance for the Chrysalis series, 2012, photo-shoot, Sydney, Australia, See (fig. 4.18) Figure 4.3: ------57 Roohi Ahmed, experiments for second skin, 2012, photo-shoot, Sydney, Australia Figure 4.4: ------57 Roohi Ahmed, record of performative act, for Pareidolia, Australia, 2013. See (fig. 4.11) Figure 4.5: ------58 Roohi Ahmed, In-Visibility, work under progress, for an upcoming exhibition at the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK Figure 4.6: ------59 Roohi Ahmed, stills from the video Sew and Sow, 2012. Sydney, Australia Figure 4.7: ------60 Liminal Terrain I & II, 2012, digital print on photo rag archival paper Figure 4.8: ------61 A Stitch In Time I, II & III, 2012, digital print on photo rag archival paper Figure 4.9: ------61 Stills from the video Aura, 2011 Figure 2.10: ------62 Roohi Ahmed, Premonition, 2012, silkscreen on BFK Reeves Figure 4.11: ------63 Roohi Ahmed, Pareidolia, 2012, digital print on photo rag archival paper Figure 4.12: ------64 Roohi Ahmed, Watermark series, 2011, body impressions on carbon paper Figure 4.13: ------66 Blue Field and Red Field, 2011, carbon pigment on Arches Figure 4.14: ------66 Blue Field process and surface detail Figure 4.15: ------67 Blue Field Construction and Red Field Construction, 2011, carbon paper and thread Figure 4.16: ------68 Rumour Has It, 2011, carbon pigment on paper Figure 4.17: ------68 Left to Right, Consciousness I (75.3 x 41.6 cm), Perception II (42 x 59.4 cm) & Recognition I, (21 x 29.7 cm), 2011. Carbon pigment on paper Figure 4.18: ------69 Chrysalis I, II & III, 2012, digital print on archival photo rag paper

5 GLOSSARY

Allah It is the Arabic word for God (literally "the God", as the initial "Al-" is the definite article). It is used mainly by Muslims to refer to the Islamic God, and often by Arab Christians, albeit not exclusively, by Arabic speakers, Indonesian, Malaysian and Maltese Christians and Mizrahi Jews.

Barzakh That which intervenes between two things, a barrier. Al-Barzakh is generally viewed as the barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds in which the soul waits after death and before resurrection on Qiyamah (Judgment Day).

Dervish A Muslim (specifically Sufi) religious man who has taken vows of poverty and austerity. Dervishes first appeared in the 12th century; they were noted for their wild or ecstatic rituals. Someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path.

Hadith A collection of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w) that includes his sayings, acts, and approval or disapproval of things. Hadith is revered by Muslims as a major source of religious law and moral guidance. Since the Qurʾan explicitly mandates Muslim obedience to the Prophet in legal and ritual matters, the hadith in Islamic law (shariʿa) became a source of legislation second only to the Qurʾan.

Hajj One of the largest annually occurring pilgrimages in the world and a religious duty that must be carried out by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so at least once in his or her lifetime. The Hajj is performed in Makkah, Saudi Arabia only from 8th – 12th of the last month of the Islamic calendar and is a demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people, and their submission to Allah.

Henna A flowering plant (Lawsonia inermis) of the Middle East with fragrant white or reddish flowers. The word henna is also used for a paste made from ground leaves of this plant, which gives a reddish-orange stain. This paste is used as a dye for hair colouring and temporary skin decoration. It is usually applied on the hands and feet where the designs will last the longest.

Ka’bah Also Kaaba, literally means “cube” in Arabic and is known as Baitullah, or the “House of Allah (God)”. An Islamic holy site in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. For any reference point on Earth, the qibla is the direction to the Ka’bah. Muslims face this direction during Salat (prayer). s.a.a.w. An acronym for “Sall'Allahu Alayhi Wassalam”, meaning, “may the graces, honours and peace of Allah be upon him”. It is obligatory for Muslims to recite this on mentioning the name of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w). This is instructed in Qur’an (Sura Al-Ahzab, Chapter 33, Verse 56).

Salaat Also salat, salah, salaah. Salat is prayer, the second pillar of Islam; a prescribed liturgy performed five times a day (preferably in a mosque) and oriented towards Ka’bah, Makkah. 6 Sama (Arabic samā‘un, Turkish Sema) A Sufi ceremony performed as dhikar. Sama means "listening", while dhikr means "remembrance". Performers sought through abandoning one's nafs (ego) or personal desires, by listening to the music, restrain from movement and crying while focusing on Allah, until they reach a point in which they can no longer hold back their emotion.

Ṭawāf Ṭawāf is one of the Islamic rituals performed during Hajj and Umrah. While performing Tawaf Muslims circumambulate the Ka’bah seven times, in a counter clockwise direction. The circling is believed to demonstrate the unity of the believers in the worship of the One God, as they move in harmony together around the Ka’bah, while supplicating to Allah.

Umrah The Umrah is a pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, performed by Muslims that can be undertaken at any time of the year.

7 INTRODUCTION

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe. –– Persian poet and Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi (1207–1273)

Karachi is Pakistan’s commercial capital and largest city, with a population of 18 million.1 My memories of growing up there suffuse me with a warm and positive feeling. Being in Karachi is as comfortable for me as being in my own skin, and although I have lived in other cities in Pakistan and abroad, I feel a connection to this city that brings me back time and again for comfort and breathing space.

Karachi is an amalgam of ethnic and religious communities. It houses the largest community of Indian Muslim immigrants from the 1947 India-Pakistan partition. It later became home to an influx of Afghans, who migrated during the regime of General Zia- ul-Haq2 in the late 1970s. This led to many conflicts between ethnic groups, however I was raised in an environment that upheld Islamic and Eastern values; respect for other religions and communities was paramount. This gave me my interest in different cultural perspectives.

In the early 1950s my parents migrated from India across the newly formed political boundary of Pakistan, settling in Karachi. They left property and possession behind for a country where they would be free to practise Islam. Later they moved to Dhaka, capital of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)3, but soon found themselves repeating their first migration and returning to the safety of Karachi. I was five at the time, and have vivid recollections of this return from Dhaka. War prompted our move, not war between enemies, but between two arms trying to sever each other from the same body without realising the implications. It was 1971, and Bangladesh proclaimed its independence

1 Marshal, Andrew, “To Live and Die in Karachi,” Time Magazine, Jan 16, 2012. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2103706,00.html, Accessed 01 March 2012 2 General Zia-ul-Haq was the chief of army staff and took control of Pakistan by proclaiming martial law, which lasted from 1977 – 1988. See Blood, Peter R. (ed.), Pakistan: A Country Study. Area Handbook. Sixth edition. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995. p.63 3 West, Barbar A. Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. New York: Facts On File Inc., 2009. p. 97. 8 from West Pakistan, from which it was physically separated by 950 miles of Indian territory4 (fig. 0.1). We left behind everything, as there was no time to collect and pack our belongings. Returning to Karachi had a different meaning this time. We were forced to cross a new geographical boundary that had formed like a scar after bloody ethnic massacre. I can still recall the fear, and my inability to understand why our lives were suddenly at risk from the same people with whom we had lived. The constant rhetoric of borders, lines and divisions was etched in my memory. This perhaps influenced my early interest in maps, establishing the question of boundaries that appeared in my later work. These memories and the charting of various kinds of boundaries are the subjects I explore in this thesis.

Figure 0.1: Map of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

When I was young I shared my father’s love of travel and exploration, collecting stamps and maps. He was an aeronautical engineer for Pakistan International Airlines who was often posted to different cities in Pakistan and abroad, so we regularly moved from one place to another, giving us a portable lifestyle with a rather minimal approach to the accumulation of goods. As with my parents, through alternations of placement and displacement I cultivated a sense of letting go. This enabled me to understand that life is not linear; it has more sides and dimensions, depending on one’s position within the relative scheme of things. To make sense of displacement and keep track of my journey my father introduced me to the art of map making. Mapping and documentation became

4 West, Barbar A. Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. New York: Facts On File Inc., 2009. p. 89. 9 a way to deal with my changing surroundings. Maps produced a site where every dot, line and shape, and every boundary and centre is within arm’s length. This realisation was strengthened when I began my drawing training at art school, and I later began to explore such issues directly in works like Hum5 (2000) (fig. 0.2) and South Asia Political & Geodetic Datum Unknown6 (2000) (fig. 0.3).

Figure 0.2: Roohi Ahmed, Hey + Meem (Urdu alphabets) = Hum (Us) – 2000. Colour pencil, ink, bitumen, paper and Xerox transfer on gypsum board, 20 x 30 cm.

Figure 0.3: Roohi Ahmed, [L to R] South Asia, Political – 2000, Geodetic Datum Unknown – 2000 Colour pencil, ink, bitumen, paper and Xerox transfer on gypsum board, 72 x 46 cm each.

5 Part of the art exchange project Aar Par 2000 between India and Pakistan, exhibited in Karachi and Mumbai simultaneously. See: http://aarpaar2.tripod.com/00.htm 6 These works were made as a reaction to the refusal by the Indian organisers to exhibit Hum in Mumbai. Hum was sent back and was exhibited in Karachi. The reason given that Kashmir is shown surrounded by question marks whereas the Indian understanding of Kashmir is that it is very much a part of India. 10 When I first studied art in Pakistan, emphasis was placed on figure drawing because the Pakistani art schools followed a Western curriculum model. I remember my first life drawing class, where we were introduced to Leonardo da Vinci’s model of the perfect body, Vitruvian Man, created in (c. 1490). In class, we drew semi-nude male models, which made boys and girls alike feel awkward. Female models were rare and when available were fully clothed. The practice of measuring the figure with a pencil held in outstretched arm and one eye closed made the process seem all the more voyeuristic. Living in a culture rooted in Islamic values, the prohibition of drawing figures out of respect had been engrained in me. I grew up understanding that covering the body is a sign of respect, modesty and civility, and keeping an arm’s length from the opposite gender is essential. But figure drawing was a required course, so I put my reservations on hold and convinced myself to approach it as a medical student would. These bodies were like specimens – something detached from life. The more I understood human anatomy and its skeletal structure the more I marvelled at it. I acquired a facility to translate it in any medium, whether graphite, paint or clay. The practice of clothed life drawing, although an oxymoron fascinated me and perhaps pushed me to imagine the uncharted territories of human body.

Figure 0.4: Life-drawing class taking place at the Karachi School of Art – May 2011, author’s photograph.

11 As a female student my only access to a nude model was my own body, which was quite different to the Western perfection of the Vitruvian Man. During life drawing sessions I used to feel constrained by those parts of the human form that were left to the imagination. I was ready to divide, cut and dissect my body through the captivating image of the Vitruvian Man, and in doing so, unravel the mysteries of human being. I used to wonder why Leonardo chose a male body as his object of perfect measurement, but I was too diffident to ask my teacher. It was only a few years ago that I began to ponder this question again. I wanted to delve into what went on behind the scenes, so to speak. I began looking once more into mapping and the measuring of bodies, becoming interested in the golden mean, Fibonacci series and philosophy. This connected me further with Allah (The Creator), strengthening my faith as a Muslim, and instilling a desire to discover what The Creator says about His creation. This resulted in a major shift in my practice from form to the conjunction of form and being. But upcoming political and social events pushed this spiritual quest into a more politically and socially charged endeavour.

In the late 1980s Pakistan experienced the final years of General Zia-ul-Haq’s martial law regime. Karachi witnessed the worst of ethnic and sectarian violence, and Zia’s government implemented legal measures cloaked in religious rhetoric to curb it. As a result, violence was further propagated. Every day I was enraged at the injustice, bloodshed, and horror of the situation. This finally subsided in April 1988 when General Zia unexpectedly died in a plane crash. Military rule was over. Despite my desire, I could not make artwork about such experiences for a while because no image for me could translate that lived experience.

At that time I began teaching art. Finding a safe route to work (or indeed anywhere) became a daily necessity: I took notes of route maps and began to investigate my lived experience of Karachi’s map. In 1998 I created illustrations as part of a commission for an O-level course book in Pakistan Studies7. The research demonstrated to me the power of maps and the semiotic potential of cartographic language. I employed this abstracted visual vocabulary to express the traumatic experience of living in Karachi in those troubled times without the burden of figurative image making. I created the

7 See: Sethi, H. N., The Environment of Pakistan: Pakistan Studies, London, Peak Publishing, 2001. 12 Karachi series (2000) (fig. 0.5), with maps tracing my routes to work, and through which I experienced the geography, politics and emotions of the common man on the way. My maps were a means to locate myself in this world. I questioned conventional boundaries and the map itself as a device for providing direction. In these, the journey became more important than the destination, which alluded to life itself as a journey, and worldly existence as a transitional phase towards afterlife.

Figure 0.5: Roohi Ahmed, Karachi series – 2000, Colour pencils, inks, bitumen, paper and Xerox transfer on gypsum board, 70 x 52 centimetres each.

My parents passed away within a few years of each other. This was traumatic but nonetheless made the transient nature of this material world clear to me, prompting me to look into its transitional phases. I read in detail what the Quran says about death and afterlife, and became aware of Barzakh,8 the transition zone for souls before they are summoned on the day of judgement. When speaking of someone’s death I prefer to use the term Intiqal (passing away) rather then Mo’t (death). My work asked me to negotiate such realities, to come full circle and re-invent the body. I investigated the notion of death in Lifeline (2006) (fig. 0.6). I focused on the rupture in which the body ceases to live, and where separation occurs between its physical form and that which makes it motile. This investigation prompted important themes carried through to this research.

My artistic exploration of corporeal and spiritual body through three-dimensional forms stems from my belief as a Muslim that all humans are made of clay, where in essence the body is just a container for the soul and is symbolic of Allah’s creations.9 I focused

8 That which intervenes between two things; barrier, isthmus. See Wortabet’s Arabic English Dictionary, fourth edition, Libraire du Liban, Beirut. 1984. 9 Chittick, Sachiko Murata and William C. The Vision of Islam. London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2006. p. 92-98 13

Figure 0.6: Roohi Ahmed, Lifeline I, 2006, Fabric, silk threads, metal, glass and velvet, dimensions variable. on dots and lines as the subject of intense exploration in measuring distances to and from the body; more specifically, to and from my own body. I began to see a definitive role for the performativity of drawing as a measuring tool in relation to my body and its surroundings. However to quantify this distance I needed a modus operandi, and the solution was just an arm's length away.

In my culture I saw women always walking behind men, a distance that is prevalent in Muslim cultures. Furthermore, after the age of ten, greeting someone of the opposite gender at arm's length became part of my upbringing. When I asked my mother about it she answered that it is not about inequality but respect. She explained the relationship of a husband and wife by quoting from Quran (02:187), where Allah says that men are like apparel for women, and women like apparel for men. One dresses the other. To her this was the most beautiful description of this relationship. What one wears is closest to one’s skin; it conceals what is intimate, protects and yet adorns it at the same time. Looking back, I can see how the performative act of keeping a specific distance started to encompass every aspect of my life.

14 Although dance as performative art is taboo for females among orthodox Islamic teachings, I began to see Muslim prayer as an equivalent performative act. On visiting Turkey I experienced the Sama, 10 a traditional Sufi performance that includes singing, playing instruments and spiritual movements akin to dancing. The performers, Whirling Dervishes, move in a repetitive circular motion, raising their right arms to the sky and pointing their left arms to the earth. Their movements are slow and meditative, and the positioning of their arms became a departure point in my understanding of the meaning of an arm’s length. They move around each other in repetitive circles, around a centre point as a symbolic imitation of planets in the solar system orbiting the sun. The circular movement around the sun alludes to the halo or aura, the energy field of luminous radiation that surrounds a person and is imperceptible to most human beings11. I began to see the importance of this surrounding space as a way of measuring spaces in relation to the body.

Figure 0.7: Dervishes revolving with their outstretched arms to the rhythm of ney (Turkish flute).

Although I have experienced the body being investigated in the form of medical imaging but after the attacks on the New York World Trade Centre on September 11 2001, I encountered body-scanning technology at various international airports, giving

10 A Sufi ceremony performed as dhikar. Sama means "listening", while dhikr means "remembrance". During, J., and R. Sellheim. "Sama" Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition. Ed. P. Bearman, T. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. Van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs. Brill Online, 2010 11 University of Granada (2012, May 4). Aura, the energy field of luminous radiation that surrounds a person and is imperceptible to most human beings. ScienceDaily. Accessed 25 March 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com- /releases/2012/05/120504110024.htm 15 another dimension to this investigation into the body. As a controversial political device to map the human body for potential explosives and weapons, body scanners had far- reaching cultural and political implications.12 Their impact on the human body is psychological. With arms raised and rendered in medical radiation one is susceptible to public humiliation. This helped me connect the mapping of the body and its forced performance in public space.

Figure 0.8: Images from an active millimetre wave body scanner.

These experiences have had profound impact on my contemplation of the spiritual, cultural and political distances that a body measures. At this point, despite being trained as a sculptor and installation artist working with metal and soft materials and using varied techniques such as welding and sewing, I started exploring the performative nature of art making, specifically returning to the realm of drawing. My artistic exploration of performance and drawing began when I took life-drawing courses in the USA. Standing in front of a drawing easel and stretching out my arm to measure the body and then make marks on the paper, I was conscious of the performance in which I was involved. This had a deep impact on my understanding of drawing’s performative nature. Whether drawing is on paper, cloth or the human body itself, it ultimately becomes a performative act, where the result is not about perfect choreography but the

12 TSA (Transportation Security Administration) will Remove Its Controversial 'Nude' Body Scanners From All US Airports. Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/tsa-remove-controversial-full-body- scanners-1B8038882, accessed 27 March 2013

16 expression of emotional investment in the entire performance. Drawing is a performative act that comes closest to my lived experiences; through it, my body senses and translates lived experiences, making them visible in different ‘drawn’ ways. For me drawing dots and lines became a way to measure myself and my “pure existence in the world and the meaning that could be attributed to this existence as creative intention and interpretation.”13

Lastly, it is important here to talk about what I experienced during this MFA and its impact on my research and thinking. At the beginning of my MFA I suffered a knee injury that affected my mobility. I was not only diagnosed with arthritis, but came to learn that my body had began to move through a mid-life crisis, a time of any woman’s life that in many cultures is often feared and disregarded. Such realisations severely impacted my thinking as well as my making of artworks. Gradually, however, I came to see my body as a chrysalis. These experiences and the works produced alongside them are part of a path to self-realisation; my MFA research gave an opportunity to draw up the resources that will bring me through this phase of my life. As an artist and a woman growing older, I want to make art that is authentic to my lived experience.

My research here draws on these experiences, to explore the role played by the performative, cultured body in space in my ongoing practice. In Chapter One I lay the groundwork for my understanding of the body and performance, situating my practice among other artists’ works that continue to influence me. Chapter Two lays out the fundamental principles of measuring the body, defining the role of the arm’s length in this work. In Chapter Three I look at the expanded measures of the body through mapping and covering, which became key devices in my practice. And in Chapter Four I discuss how these themes evolved in my own work. The result is a body of work that examines the female Muslim body and the space it marks out in art history and contemporary culture.

13 Butler, Cornelia H., and Catherine de Zegher. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century. New York: The , 2010. p.23. 17

CHAPTER ONE POINTS OF DEPARTURE

We have created all human beings to be equally worthy of respect –– Al-Quran: Sura Al-Asra – Verse 70

Area of Investigation

My research asserts that personal histories require conduits through which to form a viable mode of expression. These conduits are physical, perceptual and psychological. In this research my body acts as the means through which my interpretations of the world are performed and recorded. My methodology is grounded in the ethics of experimentation, where performative experimentation reflects personal choices. As a professional artist, I judge situations and issues critically and creatively from an ethical point of view, setting aside personal prejudice. I use the analogy of the map as a tool for such experimentation of a particular territory – my own body and the space within its arm’s length – so as to reach unforeseen destinations.

As a female Pakistani artist, the conditions of my practice arise from social, political and religious conditioning, specifically in terms of Islamic and South Asian culture. In this culture an arm’s length defines the distance between man and woman, and demarcates public and private space. Such a stretched out body alludes to Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, a Western model of perfection (i.e. Adam), which renders woman (Eve) as imperfect, supplementary and the cause of original sin.14 However in Islam both Adam and Eve are equally marvelled at and answerable without the burden of a

14 Nead, Lynda. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. p. 8

18 Catholic original sin. Despite this, Pakistan’s patriarchal society measures women under the Vitruvian Man’s symbolic ideal to render them secondary. The Vitruvian Man features prominently in this work, partly because it is the standard against which the framework of Pakistani Art education was established, and partly because of its evocative and grandiose rendering of the arm’s length.

Since my work on Lifeline (2006) (fig. 0.6), my research has converged on what covers the surface of the body. That is, first and foremost, the skin. Its topology, stretching and covering ability, and porous nature, makes the skin a complex physical form that breathes, bleeds, sheds and re-generates, having a life of its own. For Didier Anzieu, the ego is the psychic envelope and the skin an enclosure for the body.15 Skin is not a rigid site, nor does it have a pre-determined map. It is a transitional zone where life and death negotiate their boundaries with every breath and every touch. Such ideas will be further refined in Chapter Three. In terms of my studio practice, I not only looked at the topology of the body but also the space surrounding it and reciprocal impacts they exert on each other. I focused on mapping and covering the arm’s length of a distance from my own body. The very first element to catch my attention was the hand, which functions like an outpost of the body, the only part of ourselves that can be viewed in the round. Inscribed on the palm is the first map that I came across and which has altered with me over time. Although I had used the hand and palm as a metaphor for the body in my earlier drawings Hands On series (2011) (fig 1.1), it is only during this research that the hand as body and the body as hand has centred on the performativity of drawing.

15 Anzieu, Didier. The Skin Ego. Translated by Chris Turner. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989. p. 50-51 19

Figure 1.2: Hands On series (2011)

Until now I have never been interested in using the literal representation of my own body in my art practice. Figures always remained in silhouette or an abstract expression. Using an image was an obstacle in unravelling or decoding other encrypted layers embedded within the artwork. However my encounters with the oral history of Aboriginal culture and the Australian landscape, especially the struggle of Aboriginal women has had a far-reaching impact on me. What pushed me to jump over this self- imposed hurdle was Edward Said’s profound thought:

the more one is able to leave one’s cultural home more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment and the generosity necessary for true vision16

My video Aura and performance works in the Australian desert, recoded as a series of photographs, marks my crossing of this threshold and perhaps the beginning of a new understanding of my own body and its unchartered drawn performativity.

16 Said, Edward W., Orientalism, Reprint edition. London: Penguin Books, 2003. p. 259 20

Figure 1.2: Roohi Ahmed, drawing with the body on sand, Perry Sand Hills, Wentworth, New South Wales, Australia, 2012

Body, Space and the Performativity of Drawing

The body is a passive medium on which cultural meanings are inscribed...17 –– Judith Butler

Despite its grounding in Eastern and Islamic traditions, my work takes its cue from the contemporary practices of Western art, where, like Butler’s inscribed passive medium, the body plays a significant role as active performer. The resulting performances, actions and drawings amalgamate the everyday acts of my ‘passive body’ with the aesthetics of .

Performance and performativity are derivatives of the verb ‘to perform’. Performativity is embodied enactment. Drawing as both a means to perform and the result of a performance, is a direct transference of raw emotions into the visual through the mark making of the hand. What is left is a residual map of that activity. It is like the ancient

17 Butler, Judith. "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire." Chap. 24 In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During. London: Routledge, 1999. p. 347 21 cave paintings created in deep recesses that were not meant to be seen. Drawing has a strong relationship with performativity, and once the action is done the drawn outcome provides a map through which to read the layers of its making. Performance is about the artist’s gestures, as in Jackson Pollock’s drawn paintings which trace his body’s movements in the act of dribbling paint over canvas.

Cornelia H. Butler, MOMA’s chief drawings curator, and Catherine de Zegher, a former director of the Drawing Centre, have charted a history of drawing that presents a revolutionary departure from institutional definition 18 . Their work moves from a reliance on paper as the drawing’s fundamental support material, to discuss instead how artists push the line across the plane into real space. This expands the medium in relation to gesture and form, connecting it to painting, , photography, film and dance. According to Butler and Zegher, the performativity of drawing involves “the mapping of both abstract and everyday lines, [where] stories are told and social space is narrated and inscribed.”19 Using Michel de Certeau’s notion of space as “a practice place”20, Butler and Zegher explore performative actions that take “into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables”21 As this practice place is mapped it reveals “the communal space in which we live.”22 The “hybridity of [the] practice of life-into-art-into-life” in this communal space is “navigated through politics of land and body”.23

Butler and Zegher use Kandinsky’s proposition that a line is a point set in motion that harmonises formal and spiritual elements, as well as Paul Klee’s notion of ‘taking a line for a walk’. These concepts demonstrate that analogies between drawing and movement can play a vital role in the mapping of this communal space.

Drawing is not only a medium but also a primal drive where the body’s movement reveals much about our selves and our world. They conclude that drawing, in both

18 Butler, Cornelia H., and Catherine de Zegher. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. p. 182 19 Ibid. p. 182 20 Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1988. 21 Ibid. p.117 22 Butler, Cornelia H., and Catherine de Zegher. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. p. 182 23 Ibid. p. 184. 22 process and outcome, is all about “keeping an eye out for the appearance of [the] obvious”. Drawing is identified through Claus Oldenburg as “something fundamental” that aligns “with lived experience”, which can be captured through performativity24.

In my exploration of the lived experience of drawing and performativity, Western artists such as , Rebecca Horn, Agnes Martin, Michael Heizer, Dorothea Rockburne, Jackson Pollock, Marina Abramovic, Mike Parr, and Julie Rapp and many others influenced me. These are artists who truly explore the anatomy of line in relation to body and world. Specific works such as Lotty Rosenfeld’s A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement (1979), Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Thierry de Mey’s Top Shot (2002), Francoise Sullivan’s Danse dans la neige (Dance in the snow) (1948), Atsuko Tanaka’s Round on Sand (1968), Carolee Schneemann’s performance Up to and Including Her Limits (1973-76), and Ngarti Kukatja women dancing at Kurnakulu in the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia (1997)25 are key examples that can be recruited to represent drawing as a compelling proposition about line and body.

Here I would like to discuss some deeply experiences during my MFA studies in Australia: meeting and learning about Aboriginal , and encountering the works of Australian artist Mike Parr. Among indigenous women in the deserts of Australia’s Northern Territory, an oral tradition as a strong art form is “embedded in everyday narration of their lived experience”26. Furthermore, the evolved form of the practice of painting is both performance and drawing, “…both a telling and an enacting of the nomadic, itinerant existence in and of the desert that was traditionally the Aboriginal way of life.”27 In these works the phenomenological and performing body are one, and the lines that are executed in paint/piercing/thread are “just one manifestation of a lived practice that included sand drawing, storytelling, painting and dancing”28.

24 Ibid. p. 201 25 Ibid. P. 183 (see image in On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century) 26 Butler, Cornelia H., and Catherine de Zegher. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. p. 182 27 Ibid. p. 182. 28 Ibid. p. 182. 23

Figure 1.3: Aboriginal rock painting representing hands and boomerangs. Carnarvon Gorge, Queensland, Australia.

Although I was previously familiar with Mike Parr’s practice, I only truly encountered his work during the research of this MFA in Australia. One of the most outstanding Australian artists of his generation, Parr has worked on his own body since the 1970s. Through his performative works he tests the limits of physical endurance and the mind’s capacity to confront the fear of violence and disability. In Integration 3 (2001) (Fig. 1.4), Parr lights a fuse that spirals around his leg. The fuse is tightly strapped around the skin, making a spiral line. The subsequent explosion not only disrupts this line but also breaks the threshold of mind/body limitations. Parr delves into the lived experience of the body wile seeking an immediate response from the inhabitants of the “communal space” that Butler and Zegher speak of. In his next performance, Close the Concentration Camps (2001) (Fig. 1.5), Parr pushed the body as a site for radical action, exploring the psychopathology of people and society. His lips, eyes and ears are sewn together as he sits passively. Parr’s performance mirrors the trauma experienced by ‘illegal’ immigrants who, at the time, sewed shut their lips in protest against their prolonged captivity.

24

Figure 1.4: Mike Parr, Integration 3 (Leg spiral) 1975, Figure 1.5: Mike Parr, Close The printed 2001, four gelatine silver photographs. Concentration Camps 2002, performance.

Parr was not the first to use needle and thread on his own body, his work is reminiscent of David Wojnarowicz’s short film A Fire in the Belly (1986-87) (Fig. 1.3), and Marina Abramovic’s performance Talking About Similarity (1976) (Fig. 1.4). Wojnarowicz, a New York artist of the 1980s, first sews together a broken loaf of bread before painfully stitching his own lips shut, alluding to the mute demise of the body. In Talking About Similarity, Abramovic’s partner Ulay sews his mouth shut, as she speaks on his behalf, reversing the traditional male-female hierarchy and imposing silence. Such explorations of the passive body, and the mute yet brutal actions of the active body, were distilled in

Figure 1.6: David Wojnarowicz, stills from A Fire in My Belly, Figure 1.7: Marina Abramovic, 1986-1987, colour and B&W, silent, Super 8mm film (sewn lips of Ulay) Talking on video. about Similarity, 1976. my own performance Sew and Sow (2012) (discussed in Chapter Four). Here the performance of the lived body is cathartic and private, and draws on the asceticism of

25 Eastern mystics who profess self-discipline, austerity, and the renunciation of ego- desires.

Such cathartic and contemplative notions of a lived body mark the essence of American artist Lenore Tawney, whose work I encountered during my MFA studies. Tawney, who has long been attracted to Eastern and Western mystical religious philosophies, imbues her work with a deep spiritual content. Her sensuous, hanging works are not only formally connected to work of my own such as Lifeline (2007) (fig. 0.6), but has also informed my contemplative process in the construction of free-flowing drawings.

Figure 1.8: Lenore Tawney, In Utero 1985. Chair Figure 1.9: Lenore Tawney, Box of Falling Stars and fabric. 1984, cotton canvas and knotted linen thread with acrylic paint and ink, 78.8 x 175.3 x 177.8 cm.

As this research is grounded in South Asian and Islamic cultures, it should be further contextualised within some important performative artworks that bring Eastern philosophy and illuminate the lived body of Muslim women in politically charged communal spaces. Artists such Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, Zarina Hashmi, Nasreen Mohamedi, Naiza Khan, Aisha Khalid and Risham Syed are among a long list that provide either a springboard for discussion, or echo my own art process.

In Corps Étranger (1994) (Fig. 1.7) the Palestinian-born Mona Hatoum charted her internal body with medical imaging technology. The work is simultaneously brave and 26 repulsive. A camera mounted at the tip of a tube penetrates the artist’s body, acting as a needle that maps the body’s inner dimensions, as the threat of injury remains imminent. This act of probing the body’s internal structure is sexual and primitive, personal and public. In contrast Iranian born Shirin Neshat, uses skin as a site of cultural and political protest.

Figure 1.10: Mona Hatoum, Corps Étranger, 1994. Video installations / endoscopies.

In a series of photographic works Neshat inscribes Persian text and Islamic arabesque designs on skin. This legitimates the lived body’s experience, mapping the body with textual and visual marks in ink on the flat surface of photographic prints. This work refers to the traditional practice of henna, an age-old cultural practice that I also draw on in my work. Permanent tattoos are not allowed in Islamic culture, but the decoration of hands, arms and feet with henna is a well-established tradition. Similarly, Pakistani artist Naiza H. Khan uses the henna directly to draw onto walls in her site-specific project Henna Hands (2003) (fig. 1.9). She makes life size female figures and covers them with henna designs by applying the paste directly on the surface. For her the Henna Hands “sites the body between the personal, the social and the ritualistic.”29

29 Naiza H. Khan, 2006, Henna Hands, site-specific project near the Cantonment Railway Station Karachi. Source: http://www.naizakhan.com/gallery/henna-hands-site-specific-project-cantonment- railway-station-1/, accessed 25 March 2013. 27

Figure 1.11: Shirin Neshat, Stripped 1995 Figure 1.12: Naiza Khan. Henna Hands – The March (detail), 2000, Henna paste on Wall

This ritualised use of henna in art draws attention to Muslim brides with their beautifully decorated henna hands, arms and feet stretched out, waiting for the henna to dry before taking it off (fig. 1.10). People around them serve food, pamper them, and fulfil all their needs; they are queens. I am drawn to their outstretched arms and feet hanging from the bed, decorated with endless lines that would remain absorbed in the skin for several days. Although the stain of henna wears off after some days but the marks of experience are retained on the skin.

Figure 1.13: Brides outstretched hands and feet while drying henna.

28 The leading contemporary Pakistani artist Aisha Khalid carries this theme of ritualised mark making further.30 She draws on this ornamentation of the female body, and through her training in miniature painting explores the tactile nature of needle and thread as her drawing medium. The resulting works are layered with personal, cultural and political subtexts. In Conversation (2002) (Fig. 1.11), she uses to speak about restrained communication between West and East. She then revisited this work in Larger Than Life (2012) (Fig. 1.12), a site-specific performative installation where the skin of the wall becomes a surface for embroidery. The work makes connections between the textile cities of Manchester and Faisalabad, her birth city.

Figure 1.14: Aisha Khalid, Conversation – 2002, double channel video 120 minutes

Figure 1.15: Aisha Khalid, Larger Than Life – 2012, site-specific installation, 21x 28 feet

30 Aisha Khaild is part of a generation that has revitalised the traditional medium of miniature painting. She has worked with diverse mediums and embroidery is one of the recurring themes in her works. 29

Similar to Kahlid, Pakistani artist Risham Syed uses fabric, thread and sewing techniques to question the obvious and make visible that which is not. She tackles themes linked to her life, experiences and surroundings in Lahore. She explains:

My oeuvre is related to topics pertaining to history, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how the events that occurred back then are still impacting our everyday lives today, both in Lahore and the rest of the world.31

Figure 1.16: Risham Syed – 2012, The Seven Seas, seven quilts. In each of these works lines are created through ink, sewing needles, embroidery and medical imaging. They echo the manifestation of lived practice among Aboriginal women, and perhaps women artists everywhere who understand the role of the body as a spiritual and political site, exploring it in order to contest the construction of female identity. Drawing lines to understand the lived experience of the female body is how I conduct my own work in this research, as I relate it to my own experience of the performativity of the arm’s length in Islamic Pakistani culture. This performative act encompasses every aspect of my life such as the notion of women greeting men at an arm's length, the positioning and pinning of the headscarf or dupatta 32 over my shoulders and head and my bodily movements during everyday prayers. These acts are rituals, choreographed and well rehearsed. Dupatta becomes an extension of the female body and serves many functions besides covering it. But the arm’s length is also central

31 Source: http://christinedonley.com/2012/02/13/abraaj-capital-art-prize-winner-risham-syed/ 32 Within the Pakistani culture a lot of associations are attached to this rectangular piece of clothing called dupatta, chunri or chadder. It is equated with woman and honour. It is worn draped over the frontal torso and head. 30 to my artistic upbringing. Drawing with one arm is itself a choreographed performance. The arm simultaneously activates body and drawn surface. Using a sewing machine is an example of this performative act. The arm constantly works in a circular motion, simultaneously puncturing the fabric and filling it with thread, resulting in a drawn line. The following chapters explore these notions of measuring, covering, performing and marking as they relate to my cultural upbringing and art practice.

Figure 1.17: sewing with my mother’s old sewing machine; stitching the Blue Field Construction, Karachi, Pakistan, 2012, See (fig. 4.15)

31 CHAPTER TWO MEASURING THE BODY

The body is man’s first and most natural instrument. Or more accurately, not to speak of instruments, man’s first and most natural technical object, and at the same time technical means, is his body.33 –– Marcel Mauss, 1979

The central concern of this chapter is the body itself: its measurement and definition. Tracing Western and Eastern traditions, I explore the geometry of the body, focusing on Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man and drawing out the philosophical discourses of the point, line, square and circle that underpin its construction. The Vitruvian Man is chosen because of its canonical position in Western art and its foundational role in my own Pakistani art education. From this I establish my own position on one of the central terms of this thesis, the ‘arm’s length’.

The Vitruvian Man

Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man symbolises the ideal proportions of a male human body, and also celebrates the merger of art and science. The pen and ink drawing depicts a nude male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs together and apart, inscribed in circle and square respectively. The drawing and text are sometimes referred to as the Canon of Proportions, or simply the Proportions of Man. The drawing is based on the investigation of the ancient Roman architect , from Book III of his treatise , in which he describes the human figure as the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture. The drawing highlights the mutual relationship between ideal human proportions and geometry. The Vitruvian Man is a milestone in Leonardo’s attempt to relate man and nature, proclaiming man to be cosmografia del minor mondo (the cosmography of the

33 Mauss, Marcel. "Techniques of Body." In Economy and Society Vol.2, no. 1 (1973). p. 104 32

Figure 2.1: Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man c. 1490, pen and ink with wash over metal point on paper, 34.4 x 25.5 cm microcosm).34 It is believed that the square in this image symbolises the material existence of man, while the circle represents his spiritual existence. Here Leonardo maps human potential while also establishing connections with astronomy and geometry to define the ideal human form. The image is built of point and line, shape (circle and square) and figure. These elements are also among the core investigative tools in my own art making, in conjunction with the performativity of the body through an arm’s length. Although detailed studies of such topics are available in various areas ranging from science to theology, for the purpose of this research I focus on outlining the various meanings and applications of these topics within Eastern and Islamic art.

34 "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (“cosmography of the microcosm”). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe." Gorman, Michael John, STS 102: Lenardo: Science, Technology, and Art”, Stanford University, Fall 2002.

33 Point (Nuqta) and Line (Khatt)

The Vitruvian Man is a marvel in which strategic points are placed to determine perfect proportions when connected through lines. Specific lines are marked to divide the square and circle into exact proportions, also known as squaring the circle.

Point and line are the most fundamental objects in geometry. The Arabic nuqta equates with the English ‘dot’ or ‘point’, and khatt refers to ‘line’ and ‘construction’. According to Keith Critchlow, a point (nuqta) is the beginning, which marks a position. A line (khatt) is born of a connection between two positions. This line can be extended infinitely in opposing directions from both ends. Nuqta and khatt are also the core of Arabic . Literally understood in the West as ‘beautiful handwriting’, the true essence of Arabic calligraphy lies in its esoteric understanding of the universe. When the two points meet through a curved line they from an arch. When the second point of this arch returns to the original, a circle, a domain is formed and it reaches completion.35 Like the Vitruvian Man, Arabic calligraphy demonstrates the principles of geometry and presents an image of the macrocosm of the universe.

Making a line in Arabic calligraphy produces the Arabic letter Alif, which forms the diameter of an imaginary circle within which all Arabic letters can be written. It is thus a basic unit of proportion. Alif is the first letter in the name of Allah, and is attributed a numerical value of one. Allah the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful created everything, so everything begins in His name; He is also Ahad (One). When a nuqta is placed under khatt it forms the second Arabic letter, Bey, which starts the word Bissmillah (In The Name Of Allah). This is read before recitation of Quranic verses, and Muslims are instructed to recite it before embarking on any endeavour. In Arabic calligraphy, nuqta in conjunction with the circle inscribed by Alif, is another unit for maintaining the proportions of letters. The point (nuqta) possesses no dimension but when multiplied can form a line. Thus a point falls in a metaphysical domain, and “clearly there has to be a precise differentiation between physical and metaphysical,

35 Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach, 1976 Thames and Hudson. p. 9-11 34 between idea and expression, yet both are embraced by one reality”36. In essence, the point represents unity while the line represents multiplicity.

Figure 2.2: Calligraphic diagrams of the letters alif and ain using the proportional system based on the rhombic Nuqta

Philosophically, everything starts with a point and ends in a point. Critchlow identifies it as a symbol of unity and source.37 Ibne Sina (Avicenna) is said to have identified nuqta with the ancient Greek logos, defined as “the active, material, rational principle of the cosmos; nous. Identified with God, it is the source of all activity and generation and is the power of reason residing in the human soul”38.

Circle (Da-ira) and Square (Mu-raba)

In geometry, a point invites the use of a compass to draw a circle. Four points at four corners invite a ruler to draw a square. The circle (da-ira) and the square (mu-raba) are the fundamental forms of Islamic geometry. Critchlow writes that a circle is “not only the perfect expression of justice – equality in all directions in a finite domain – but also the most beautiful ‘parent’ of all the polygons both containing and underlying them.” 39 The circle and square connect the material body with the Divine and metaphysical,

36 Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach, Thames and Hudson, 1976. p. 7. 37 Ibid. p. 9 38 Farlex. "Logos." In The Free Dictionary. Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Logos 39 Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach, Thames and Hudson, 1976. P. 9 35 similar to the Vitruvian Man’s allusion to . Pythagoras thought that geometric figures were powerful magical symbols: the square “is the natural way that humans relate to the physical world,” such as “four directions, four seasons, and four elements.”40 In Pythagorean thinking, the human figure fits into circle and square as a geometric proof of our dual nature. Such ideas, though fragmented, were adopted in the Renaissance by artists like Leonardo da Vinci.

Figure 2.3: Circle and Square. Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach. p. 25 & 29

The overlapping of circle and square in the Vitruvian Man to find cosmic balance mirrors Islamic thought, where the circle represents unity and completion, and the square represents the physical world.41 The square is also the shape of the Muslim holy building Ka’bah42 (Fig. 2.4) in Makkah, making both circle and square the symbolic backbone of Islamic philosophy. Ahmed Mater, a contemporary Saudi artist uses the magnetic field to highlight this relationship between the circle and the square (Fig. 2.5) drawing a parallel with the act of performing tawaf around Ka’bah. With its four equal sides, the square (Ka’bah) symbolises the four natural elements: earth, air, fire and water. The physical world, represented by a circle that encompasses the square, “would

40 Place, Robert M. The Tarot History, Symbolism, and Divination. Tarcher/Penguin, New York, 2005 41 Mensen, Raven, Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook Project, 2007 http://www.ivc.edu/academics/schoolFA/arthistory/Documents/art2526projects/davinci_f07/page/ analysis.html. Access date: January 2013. Also see: http://muslimmedianerd.com/2012/05/29/introduction-to-islamic-art-architecture-part-i-arabesque/ 42 Ka’ba (cube). The House Of Allah is in Makkah in the western part of Saudi Arabia, not far from the Red Sea. It is a small cubical building made of stones. 36 collapse upon itself and cease to exist” if any one of the four were missing from the equation.43

Figure 2.4: Pilgrims bowing down while Figure 2.5: Magnetism I, photograuve etching print, performing slaat around Ka’ba during Hajj. 2012. Ahmed Mater. 62 x 81 cm.

The circle and square are geometric concepts that form a worldview. They act as building blocks of Islamic arabesques and geometric patterns, which constitute an infinite extending beyond the visible material world. The infinite creation of patterns is recognised as “centralised, nature of the creation of the one God (Allah) and conveys a spirituality44 without the figurative iconography of the art of other religions.”

In terms of border and boundaries, the Vitruvian Man first stands inscribed in a square, and then with feet and arms outspread he is inscribed in a circle. These proportions provide an excellent early example of how Leonardo’s studies of proportion fused artistic and scientific objectives. It was him rather than Vitruvius who pointed out that if you open the legs so as to reduce the stature by one-fourteenth and open and raise your arms so that your middle fingers touch the line through the top of the head, know that the centre of the extremities of the outspread limbs will be the umbilicus, and the space between the legs will make an equilateral triangle.

Here he provides his simplest illustration of a shifting “centre of magnitude” without a corresponding change to the “centre of normal gravity”. This remains passing through the central line from the pit of the throat through the umbilicus and pubis between the

43 The Muslim media Nurd, Islamic Art & Architecture in Brief – Part I: Arabesque, May 29, 2012 See: http://muslimmedianerd.com/2012/05/29/introduction-to-islamic-art-architecture-part-i- arabesque/ 44 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Islamic Art and Spirituality. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. p.195 37 legs. Leonardo repeatedly distinguished these two different centres of the body (i.e. the centres of magnitude and gravity).45

The Figure

The ideal Vitruvian Man is central to the Western canon, where man is taken as the centre of the universe. Such certain self-importance shown by placing oneself in the centre does not sit well in Islamic thought. In Western art, the nude has been considered as the perfect subject for art. According to Kenneth Clark “the nude remains the most complex example of the transmutation of matter into from”46, which begins in the ancient Greek ideal of a harmony of proportion and mathematics. For Lynda Naeed, the Vitruvian Man is the pinnacle of this “regulation of sensory and organic perceptions through order and geometry.”47 For her, the Vitruvian Man brought the “matter/form dichotomy …to a temporary resolution, with the male nude perfectly articulated through mathematical relations – the body as pure form.”48 However, consequentially this poses a problem as the Vitruvian figure is male, and “the resolution of matter and form cannot be accomplished in the same way in the representation of the female nude.” 49 Historically, the female body has occupied a secondary role in Western religion and philosophy. As Eve was formed from Adam’s rib, woman was created to abate man’s own sense of loneliness. The Adam and Eve pairing is a founding opposition within Western thought. The two terms share a structural link (i.e. Adam’s rib) but they are not equal. Adam is the primary subject, and Eve a supplementary function whose existence testifies to a basic lack in Adam. Many other value oppositions are mapped onto this man/woman relationship, including the culture/nature pairing. If the male signifies culture, order and geometry (perfectly visualised in the Vitruvian Man), the

45 Keele, K. D. Corpus of the Anatomical Works in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen, Vol. 3, New York: Johnson, 1979–1981. p. 252 46 Clark, Kenneth. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959. p. 23 47 Nead, Lynda. "Getting Down to Basics: Art, Obscenity and the Female Nude." Chap. 202 In New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, edited by Isobel Armstrong. New York: Routledge, 1992. p. 202 48 Ibid. p. 202 49 Nead, Lynda. "Getting Down to Basics: Art, Obscenity and the Female Nude." Chap. 202 In New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, edited by Isobel Armstrong. New York: Routledge, 1992. p. 202

38 female stands for nature and physicality. For Naeed, “woman is both mater (mother) and materia (matter), biologically determined and potentially wayward.” 50 The Vitruvian Man exemplifies a “deep-seated fear and disgust of the female body and of femininity within patriarchal culture and of construction of masculinity around the related fear of contamination and dissolution of the male ego.” 51 This fear also penetrates patriarchal society in Pakistan, despite Islam’s view of man/woman as equal counterparts and clothing for one another.

As introduced earlier, in Islamic theology man and woman are recognised as clothing (apparel) for each other, where man and woman combine to form a complete identity in which each depends on the other. As written in the Quran, man supports woman and woman supports man. This releases Eve from her Western conditioning as originator of sin and places her next to Adam as Allah’s creation. However, human perfection in Islam can only be recognised in the Prophet Mohammad (s.a.a.w). Although allegorical measurements and physical attributes of the Prophet have been recorded, the taboo of figural illustration in Islam means that there is no image of the Prophet to compare the Vitruvian Man against. Furthermore, as art education in Pakistan is modelled after Western parameters, the characteristics of Renaissance art are highlighted, and spoken of as a standard against which to constantly check one’s artistic capabilities. Students are encouraged to look up artists of that time, particularly Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The importance of life drawing as a central measure of artistic talent is embedded deep in the psyche of the Pakistani artists, but this opposes the Islamic tradition in non-representational and non-figurative work. The result is a conflict of values between the majority of people holding strong religious beliefs and the artistic establishment. Both artists and audience experience a dilemma as to which skin to adopt in creating or perceiving an artwork.

50 Nead, Lynda. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. p. 8 51 Ibid. p.17-18 39 An Arm’s Length

The term ‘arm’s length’ is defined in Merriam-Webster dictionary as a distance that discourages personal contact or familiarity52. Many principles have been formed on this concept, ranging from cultural theories to capitalism.53 However, my focus on the arm’s length is for its significance as a cultural and artistic measuring tool in relation to the corporeal human body. In engaging with the physical, historical and conceptual meanings of the arm’s length I map and demonstrate the complexity of its application within my art practice.

In relation to the body, an arm’s length is used in various fields to measure physical distances. Generally, the SI base unit for length is the metre, where 1 metre is equal to 1.42857142857 arms’ length54. In sports such as the Australian Football League (AFL) an arm’s length measurement is considered from the point of the shoulder to the tip of the little finger55. For clothing, an arm’s length measurement is taken by holding one’s arm up in a ballet second position, slightly curved and out to the side, so the measuring tape extends from behind the shoulder, passing the elbow to just past the wrist. In modern figure drawing the arm’s length is measured as four and a half heads.

We then encounter a popular idiom: keep at an arm’s length. Etymologically this means “away from you by a distance equal to the length of your arm.”56 Such a meaning has varied cultural and social implications, including non-verbal communication through signs and gestures. The body language in verbal or non-verbal communication is not only culture-specific, but is believed to comprise up to ninety per cent of our total

52 Encyclopedia Britannica Company. "Arm's Length." In Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arm%27s%20length, accessed 25 March 2013. 53 In economics, for example, Arm’s Length Transactions refers to when buyers and sellers of a product have no relationship to each other and act independently. The aim is to guarantee, “Both parties in the deal are acting in their own self-interest and are not subject to any pressure or duress from the other party. Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/armslength.asp#axzz2HDyguaE0, Similarly, the term appears in the arm’s length agreement/affidavit, arm’s length pricing, arm’s length prejudice, and arm’s length debt. Source: http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.aspx?doc=/content/22624.htm&page=49 , accessed 25 March 2013 54 Convert Units. "Measurement Unit Conversion: Arms-Length." Source: http://www.convertunits.com/info/arms-length, accessed 25 March 2013 55 Top End Sports. "Fitness Testing - Arm Length." Source: http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/arm-length.htm, accessed 25 March 2013 56 Farlex. "Length." In The Free Dictionary - Idioms. Source: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/length, accessed 25 March 2013 40 communication.57 It is the culture in which we grow up that helps us to acquire certain patterns of movement that allow us to communicate non-verbally within our own group.58 In Asian cultures such as Japan, the arm’s length translates into a bow in greeting.59 In Pakistan, people use their full arm for salam, a slight bow in which the palm of the right hand is brought to the forehead. Also, two stretched arms joined at palms denote prayer in Islam. In the United States the greeting gesture of shaking hands is conducted at a full arm’s length.

In the West an arm’s length is also used intuitively as a measuring distance between two people engaged in communication. Arabs, Pakistanis and Latin Americans generally require significantly less personal space between individuals of the same gender, while “a full three feet may be deemed more appropriate in many Asian cultures such as Japan.”60 The gesture of an arm’s movement and the distance of the arm’s length are part of our everyday body language. Meanings of such gestures can be mistranslated due to simple cultural differences. For example, the right arm stretched out in front is considered offensive due to its resemblance to the Nazi Adar salute. Similarly, a right arm with open palm facing the sky is considered a beggar’s hand and frowned upon in Pakistan.

Cultural differences in body language and the meaning of the arm’s length extend to gender interactions in public space. Although the West in general has gradually revised its gender expectations to allow men and women to share more equal status and spaces in terms of acceptable body language, many cultures in the Middle East and Sub- Continent still view men as higher in status than women. Their body language expectations subsequently reflect this view. In orthodox settings women may be expected to avert their eyes in the presence of a man, cover their bodies and faces, or walk a few steps behind him at an arm’s length. In Middle Eastern countries one can

57 EL-Guindy, Dr. Boshra. "What Is Your Body Saying?" In, Tradoc Daily News (2012). http://www.tradoc.army.mil/FrontPageContent/Docs/DailyNews/2012/November/15_NOV_12.pdf, accessed 27 March 2013 58 Ibid. 59 The Japanese bow with their hands at their sides, and the depth of the bow is related to the level of respect due to the other person. They bow with their palms together and fingers outstretched, while people from Cambodia and Laos bow with their hands in front of their chests. 60 EL-Guindy, Dr. Boshra. "What Is Your Body Saying?" In, Tradoc Daily News (2012). http://www.tradoc.army.mil/FrontPageContent/Docs/DailyNews/2012/November/15_NOV_12.pdf, accessed 27 March 2013 41 shake a man’s hand after meeting him, yet cannot shake a woman’s hand and must keep an arm’s length from her. Ideas of lowering the gaze and measuring distance are embedded in Islamic teachings of modesty and piety. In Hijabul Mar'atil Muslimah, Ash-Sheik Muhammad Nassirud-Deen Al-Albani translates a Hadith in Tirmidhi by Bin 'Umar, who narrated:

Let them lower their gaze Prophet (s.a.a.w) said: ‘On the Day of Judgment Allah will not look upon one who trails his garment along out of pride.’ Um Salamah then asked: ‘What should women do with their garments?’ The Prophet (saws) said: ‘They may lower them a hand span.’ She said: ‘Their feet would still be uncovered’ The Prophet (s.a.a.w) said: then lower them a forearm's length, but no more.61

Bin 'Umar further said:

[W]hereas He indicated that the beloved, Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w), reaches Him by Him in the verse ‘So the distance between the Spectacle and the beloved was only two arms’ length, or even less.’62

Measuring and mapping one’s modesty, purity and closeness to Allah through an arm’s length impacts on the measurable physical distances between genders in Islamic cultures and are pivotal in this research. In essence, the arm’s length is a means to measure the body for its social and spiritual location.

Such esoteric measurements of space in relation to the body can be read as aura, a supposed energy field of luminous radiation surrounding a person as a halo, which is imperceptible to most human beings63. In Western art, halos are discs or nimbus that encircle the head of a sacred person, denoting light, holiness and majesty. Discussing the symbolism of light, fire and the sun in Islamic painting64 Rachel Milstein mentions Adam as the first man invested by divine light, which forms a halo. In Persian miniature painting and other oriental art forms halos are also depicted as flames around the body or head. Also rulers, in both Western and Eastern art are given halos as they are considered divine representatives of God.

61 Muslim Women's Dress in Accordance with the Qur'an and Sunnah based on Hijabul Mar'atil Muslimah by Ash Sheik Muhammad Nassirud-Deen Al-Albani. Translated and Abridged by Mahmoud Murad http://www.missionislam.com/family/hijab.htm 62 Ibid. and [Al-Quran, Surah Najam 53: verse 9]. (The Heavenly Journey of Prophet Muhammed – peace and blessings be upon him – was with body and soul.) 63 Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120504110024.htm, Accessed 13 February 2013 64 M. Sharon, Studies in Islamic History and Civilization: In Honour of Professor David Ayalon, Jerusalem, Cana. 42

Figure 2.6: An old Iranian Shi'a Figure 2.7: Seated Buddha Figure 2.8: Fifteen roundels in Muslim impression of Jesus and from Gandhara, Pakistan, about three columns with saints and Mary shows an aura as flames. 2nd - 3rd century AD. their attributes and the Virgin and Christ child above center, Engraving1500-1525.

Besides the halo, the stylistic device Velificatio has also been used in ancient . In Velificatio fire and light are replaced by a billowing garment, which represents “‘vigorous movement,’ an epiphany”.65 Milstein describes it as a billowing mantle that frames the head and torso, attributing the body with a glorified status, and is not restricted to a single deity or gender.66. Halo and Velificatio provide additional support to my thesis of this highly charged zone that immediately surrounds the body.

Figure 2.9: Jahangir Preferring Figure 2.10: Enlèvement Figure 2.11: Kaali or Durga a Sufi Shaykh to Kings From the d'Europe; painted by French Seated on Shiva Surrounded by a St. Petersburg Album Signed by artist Nöel-Nicolas Coypel in flaming nimbus, Ganesh, Skanda Bichitr, ca. 1620 1726-1727 & Devotees

65 Paul Rehak, Imperium and Cosmos: and the Northern Campus Martius, University of Wisconsin Press. Madison: 2006. p. 111. 66 M. Sharon, Studies in Islamic History and Civilization: In Honour of Professor David Ayalon, Jerusalem, Cana Ltd: 1986. 43 In the scientific investigation of spatial bodies, the arm’s length can be investigated as Personal and Peripersonal Space (PPS)67. PPS takes into account the distance between others and ourselves. Most people value their personal space (psychologically regarded as theirs), and feel discomfort, anger, or anxiety when it is encroached.68 Radiating out from the body, the surrounding space is classified into four zones, illustrated by anthropologist Edward T. Hall (fig. 2.12). Peripersonal space is the space immediately surrounding our bodies,69 which is described as “a virtual envelope around the skin’s surface that expands the body’s boundaries.”70 Peripersonal space is programmed in our psyche in such a way that it keeps us at arm’s length from each other. In the different physical exercises such as the Chinese Tai Chi, slow choreographed movements are performed to heighten awareness of the space immediately around the body and its relationship to specific body areas, especially hands and fingers.

Figure 2.13: Two people not affecting each other's personal space.

Figure 2.14: Reaction of two Figure 2.12: Diagram of Edward T. Hall's personal reaction bubbles people whose personal spaces are in conflict (1966), showing radius in feet

67 Halligan, Vaughan Bell and Peter W. "Cognitive Neurology." In Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral Sciences, edited by John T. Cacioppo Gary G. Berntson, PhD. p.1158. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2009. P. 1158 68 Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension. Doubleday: 1966. New York. 69 Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Gallese, 1997 70 Restak, R. (2009). Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance. New York: Riverhead Books. 44 In the context of an over-populated country like Pakistan, many visible and invisible boundaries are created that challenge tangible and intangible space. Within this social structure an arm’s length is further enforced through man-made borders, such as dividers in public buses or the division of queues into male and female. The reduction within this distance surmounts to violation of personal space and can signify oppression or aggression. Making the arm’s length visible within a physical space delineates borders, creating new marks, ambiguities, and understanding.

Figure 2.15: Re-contextualisation of spaces turns an arm’s length of a distance into a luxury. Left: Travelling on top of bus due to lack of transport. Right: Homeless people taking refuge in huge concrete pipes.

This chapter has set out the various methods I use to measure the body in my work. Geometry – point, line, circle and square – describes the physical body, though as seen in the Vitruvian Man it leads to the description of an idealised figure. The arm’s length then measures the physical distance between two bodies, and the distance of a performing body to an object. In this the arm’s length also measures the social body and spiritual body. In the next chapter I expand on simply measuring the body, to look at its mapping and covering.

45 CHAPTER THREE MAPPING AND COVERING THE BODY

In the Islamic perspective the Divine Principle is appreciated as being veiled or hidden behind successive ‘envelopes’, the first of which is matter; in reality, however, the Divine Principle envelops everything – as it is the whole.71 –– Keith Critchlow

In this chapter, I demonstrate how notions of mapping/map making and covering are central devices in my thinking on the performativity of the body and its construction in my art practice. This builds on the previous chapter’s discussion of point, line, circle and square, and the arm’s length, which are all essential in mapping.

Mapping

Mapping is an act of making our world comprehensible. It draws out required information and obliterates compounding factors. Such maps range from geographical surveys, anatomical diagrams, recordings of complex scientific or historical data, to any form of statistics. In terms of art, mapping is a result of mark making that leaves traces of thoughts on a surface. Hence, as result of this activity, drawing is a careful act of mapping, where it becomes the representation of the relative positions of various lines and marks on a given surface. Drawing is then a means to hold, grasp or attain a sense of power.

71 Critchlow, Keith. Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach. London: Thames and Hudson 1976. p. 96 46 Map Making

Maps are “graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes and events in the human world.72 –– J. B. Harley and David Woodward

In contemporary use, ‘map’ has come to refer to a visual representation that in some way defines measured spatial relationships. Given the map’s ability to simplify and access complexity, map making has been applied in various fields to explore uncharted territories and make them accessible. In relation to the body, map making falls into anatomical diagrams that visually represent generic or idealised bodies, and medical imaging which make the workings of the body visible. When making maps it is of the utmost importance to know the intention behind them; organised graphical representations are a means to gain power on the basis of science, geography, position in society, racial difference and gender.

As the world changes so does its map. For those who are part of this change and cannot locate themselves in one position, maps can be a stabilising factor in their lives of dislocation and relocation. Maps are also part of our daily lives, whether they are drawn, printed, or a Google map on a smart phone. Hand-dawn maps have a certain nostalgic value, and when collected over time showcase an archive of change. Perhaps even more than photographs, maps are interwoven with our lived experience.

Mapping the Body: From Perfect Order to Symbolic Order

In Bodies-Cities Elizabeth Grosz states that the body functions as “a site of social, political, cultural, and geographical inscriptions, production, or constitution.”73 She further adds that the construction of this body becomes ‘human’ through a cultural

72 Harley J. B. and David Woodward. (eds.) The History of Cartography. Vol. 1, Chicago and London: The University Of Chicago Press, 1987. p.xvi 73 Grosz, Elizabeth A. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. p. 23 47 process in which a sense of self and a set of bodily co-ordinates coincide.74 This mapping of the body, its coordinates and its representation can be accomplished in a number of ways, such as left/right or up/down stimuli. However, the mapping of our own body is not a simple task. It differs from how we interact with other bodies and objects. The full picture is only realised when our body’s physical existence combines with the myriad influences associated with it: we become aware of our body through its movement and experience. The need to develop such mapping is linked to our eternal quest for perfect order, elegance and beauty.

People throughout history have been besotted with the idea of perfection and beauty. The notion that to achieve perfection of body and soul is to become one with the Creator of the universe varies greatly from culture to culture. The Egyptians developed a strict canon of proportions to which generations had to adhere when representing the body. Neitzsche’s Superman75, the Freudian Ego76, and Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man are all modern attempts to define the ideal body in perfect order.

Religious and spiritual figures like Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Zarathustra are ideals who exemplify the highest standards of humanity for the common man to follow. In Islam the foremost ideal is the Prophet Mohammad (s.a.a.w.), the perfect man to be emulated by the rest. Ibn Arabi, 77 one of the great Muslim philosophers, proposed the doctrine of the ‘perfect man’. For him the model man is the vicegerent (Khalifa) or representative, the intermediary between God and creation, which is precisely why Adam was created (Quran 2:30)78. According to Ibn Arabi there are infinite stations (maqam) of perfection, which exude specific character traits and points of view79. For a Muslim the highest standards are provided by the Quran and established through the lived example of Prophet Mohammad (s.a.a.w.). Nevertheless, as discussed in the previous chapter, the physical mapping of Prophet Mohammad’s

74 Grosz, Elizabeth A. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. p. 243-244 75 Copleston, Frederick Charles. A History of Philosophy Volume 7. London: International Publishing Group, 2003. P.402 76 Freud Encyclopedia Theory Therapy and Culture. Edited by Edward Erwin. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. P.168-171 77 William, Chittic. "Ibn Arabi." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited, 2008. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/ibn-arabi/. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 48 (s.a.a.w.) perfection does not exist visually as Islam prohibits the making of images and idols.

In terms of the physical mapping of the body with its layered esoteric meanings, Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man maintains an enigmatic position in the visual arts. Over the centuries the Vitruvian Man has been copied, varied, parodied, updated, and altered in the quest to map the perfect male body. As explained in the previous chapter, this perfect Adamic figure, made in the likeness of God, renders Eve, woman, as imperfect. Though several artists have created versions of a “Vitruvian Woman”, this is not to celebrate ideal proportions, but instead to create a meeting of ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ figures to approximate ‘real’ body shapes. In this regard, the resulting body becomes a model for organising lived experience. It is no longer Adam and Eve, but a new ideal of the beautified human form to be studied, mapped, and graphically described.

Many philosophical questions have been raised about bodily awareness due to research undertaken in neuroscience. What makes our bodies unique is the quality of reflexivity80. When it touches, it feels being touched. When it speaks it hears as well. When it sees it feels itself seeing. For a woman, reflexivity is an ongoing process that can take many routes and meanings through various experiences. For example, the breast takes new meaning beyond vanity and pleasure when it begins to function as a source of nourishment for a child, which unfolds through intuition, proximity and touch. In this instant, the female body becomes a ‘lived body’. Furthermore, the reflexive quality is heightened on the surface of the skin. As a thin, porous, layer that separates inner from outer, the skin is constantly renewing itself. Unlike other objects, we perceive and access our own body through external and internal sensations.81

In the philosophical realm, bodily awareness can be explored under a sensorimotor view that renders three claims: (i) the body is not an object that can be represented; (ii) the presence of the body is the presence of the body in the world; and (iii) the body we experience is the body in action. For Merleau-Ponty the body is “not one more among external objects”. He draws the distinction between the objective body made of

80 de Vignemont, Frederique. Bodily Awareness. 2011. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/bodily- awareness/. 81 Ibid. 49 muscles, bones and nerves, and the lived body through which we experience in pre- reflective awareness. He argues that lived bodies are not objects that can be perceived from various perspectives, left aside or localised in objective space. They are understood in terms of practical engagement with the world. Fundamentally, the lived body cannot be an object at all because it makes our awareness of objects possible. Finally for Merleau-Ponty, the representation of the body must involve the adoption of an objective stance on the lived body. The objectified body can then no longer anchor our perception of the world.

Covering and Enveloping

Every environment is corporeal, physical, material filled with enveloping bodies. Yet the bodies cannot be understood except in terms of their prehensions of other bodies.82 –– Stephen David Ross

In the story of Adam and Eve, the desire to cover up literally predates earthly existence. Upon taking a bite of the fruit of the forbidden tree of heaven, Adam and Eve were suddenly forced into awareness of their nakedness and felt the need to cover their bodies.

Figure 3.1: Masaccio, Figure 3.2: Adam and Eve Figure 3.3: Jewish rug, 1920s depicting Brancacci Chapel, Adam from the painting in Manafi Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge, and Eve, detail. Alhyawan, Iran. Jerusalem.

82 Ross, Stephen David. "Prehensive Bodies." In The Gift of Touch: Embodying the Good. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. p. 109 50 After their expulsion from Eden they then required protection from the ravages of weather. Covering (like the skin) simultaneously obscures and protects. It can provide a comfort zone, or else suffocate and injure the body. For the purpose of this research, the spatial and temporal dynamics of covering the body are approached from two principle reference points: enveloping and veiling. Enveloping is a circular act that requires a three-dimensional mapping of the body as opposed to veiling, which is almost two- dimensional. These concepts weave in and out of each other.

Enveloping is not an act of complete separation, but the creation of an intermediate zone that is a continuity of that which is enveloped. The whole universe exists within enveloping layers: the earth’s crust is surrounded by the biosphere, which in turn is surrounded by the protective envelopes of the sky. All organisms, whether animals or plants, are enveloped by an outer layer that is in turn enveloped in successive layers of atmosphere. For human beings this enveloping is physical and psychological, and provides a zone to metamorphose. Covering creates transitional space that provides a period for development and repose.

Humans, plants and animals all go through a covering process from birth to demise. Upon death the human body is enveloped first in a shroud, and then by the loose earth of the grave. Enveloping is an intuitive act for protection and respite. From sleeping in order to rejuvenate oneself, to camping outdoors, to venturing into the unfavourable environment of outer space one needs the right covering. To be enveloped in the right layers ensures the survival of the human body.

Figure 3.4: Sleeping bag for Figure 3.5: Space Shuttle Figure 3.6: A dead man in Kafan (Islamic women space suit – 1983. shroud)

The female body, which can itself be viewed as an envelope because of its assigned child bearing role, is presented with a greater complexity in situating its own self and tracing its boundaries. Luce Irigaray asserts that “if she is to be able to contain, to

51 envelope, she must have her own envelope. Not only her clothing and ornaments of seduction, but her skin.”83 Only then can a woman fulfil the role of an envelope and welcome others in that personal space. The womb envelops a new life, providing a protective and nourishing environment for the foetus to metamorphose into a human being, until it is ready to come out of its nurturing envelope. This new body needs to locate itself in this world in relation to other bodies. It needs to set its own margins and boundaries according to the available coordinates of a cultural construct. The first space that it measures is the mother’s arm’s length, which envelops the body within the physical mapping and psychological domain of the lived body.

Figure 3.7: William Hunter, Table 11 & 12, The Anatomy of the Human Figure 3.8: Monarch butterfly Gravid Uterus chrysalis about to hatch.

Women in Islam wear a headscarf or dupatta, to cover the hair, and a chaddor to cover the body, evoking the Velificatio. But this Velificatio is also used to protect the baby by creating a womb-like space that allows women to separate themselves from others and establish a zone of heightened intimacy with the child. In cultures such as Pakistan, women also tie small objects of importance to one of the corners of chaddor, for fear of losing them in the absence of a bag or pocket. This covering becomes an extension of the body.

83 Irigaray, Luce. "Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic." In Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle, edited by Cynthia A. Freeland. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. p. 42 52 Veiling

A veil is an opaque or transparent material worn over the face for concealment, protection from the elements, and even to enhance the appearance.84 The same dupatta that is used to cover the head and body becomes a veil when pulled low over the face. Common in the Islamic World, the veil is a partial covering which acts as a separating layer, putting a visual and psychological barrier between the wearer and others. Since it is something that conceals it can also act as a mask or disguise. Etymologically the word veil derives from the Latin Vela (pl. Vellum)85, meaning a membrane. Among other meanings as an element of dress, it is also referred to as a curtain or a screen.

Figure 3.9: Veiling in different cultures and traditions L to R – Veiling tradition in Rajasthan, India, Veiling the face in Islam, Bridal veil in Christianity

In the West the veil adopts two paradoxical impressions. It is mysterious and exotic, but also a rather two-dimensional symbol of female oppression by a patriarchal Islamic world. Fadwa El Guindi examines the veil not as an object or practice connected to a certain gender or religion, but instead builds on cross-gender, cross-religious and cross- cultural knowledge in a holistic manner. He demonstrates that:

the veil as a phenomenon has been treated in a perfunctory manner, as a homogenous object, a material element of clothing almost exclusively embedded in gender, and distorted by ethnocentric accounts, or studied from the perspective of Women’s studies alone.86

84 "Veil" In Dictionary.com. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/veil, accessed 27 March 2013 85 Ibid. 86 Guindi, Fadwa El. Veil Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford and New York: Berg an Imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd., 2000. 53 In reality, veiling is a poetic and multi-layered phenomenon whose meanings change with context, rather than the linear understanding Western thinking applies to it.

Figure 3.10: The custom of veiling observed in the last two weeks of Lent in Catholic tradition.

According to Fadwa El Guindi, the many elements of clothing subsumed under the broad category of veil are classified by the body parts they conceal87, i.e. head cover, face cover and body cover. He proposes that a better approach of classifying the categories of veiling would be through veiling behaviours and meaning. He proposes classification through what the veil reveals, conceals, and what it communicates, so as to seek meaning beyond the material quality of the item.88

To veil is also to camouflage,89 a tactic to become unnoticeable in order to survive. It is a visual deception that intends to confuse the onlooker, providing a suggestion of invisibility. In terms of the body, camouflaging is “orchestrated by individuals as attempts to hide, cover, mask or aesthetically enhance the biological body.”90 These are common and normative body manipulation techniques that have become standards in a society, including make-up, clothing and costumes, perfumes and deodorants. Camouflage changes the body, makes it either unnoticeable or recognisable as

87 Guindi, Fadwa El. Veil Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford and New York: Berg an Imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd., 2000. 88 Ibid. 89 Encyclopedia Britannica Company. "Veil." In Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arm%27s%20length, accessed 25 March 2013. 90 Atkinson, Michael. Tatooed: The Sociogenesis of Body Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. p. 25. 54 something it is not. In short it is another barrier that relies on distorted perception, which again changes one’s bodily relation to space.

In this chapter I have used the primary themes of mapping and covering in order to establish the various relationships between the body and the tangible and intangible spaces that engulf it. This establishes key concerns in my art practice, which are discussed in the next chapter. Mapping and covering will become my devices for measuring, locating, recording and preserving the body’s presence within its various social and cultural coordinates.

Figure 3.11: Roohi Ahmed, Covering, Enveloping, and Veiling, Karachi, Pakistan, 2012

55 CHAPTER FOUR STUDIO PRACTICE: RESEARCH OUTCOMES

My body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at least in relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of my comprehension.91 –– Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

In this chapter I record how I went about making my artworks. The research was carried out through a coalescing of material and process explorations and conceptual rigour. Discussion and detailed description of the artworks then follows.

Process

As outlined in Chapter One, my methodology is based on the ethics of experimentation. Mapping has been used as a tool to understand my own body and the space within its arm’s length, to arrive at unforeseen destinations. I use my body as a mapping tool that not only measures, draws and records surrounding space, but also uses its own surface for private and public performative acts. These acts are recorded and explored further in my studio practice. As a female artist, the conditions for these performances arise from the social, political and religious conditioning of Islamic and South Asian culture.

As an artist I love to explore materials with my hands; processes such as sewing or stitching are interwoven throughout my practice. Such intuitive processes have been part of my studio practice and have further evolved during my MFA, distilled and strengthened by research.

Figure 4.1: Roohi Ahmed, 2011. Record of performance, which were dissected and stitched again digitally as experiments. Karachi, Pakistan.

91 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. p. 235 56 For example in the digital prints Liminal Terrain (2012), A Stitch in Time (2012) and Blue and Red Field Constructions (2012) images are digitally and physically stitched to create new skins. I also collect objects, which may or may not have direct bearing on my work initially. These objects are markers in the mapping of my creative journey.

At the beginning of my MFA my knee injury and arthritis constrained my bodily movements. My hands became the most actively used parts of my body. This restriction directed my work and my journey. My studio space did not work because of this, and I felt restricted. I collected a large pool of visual material, texts and metaphors prior to making any artworks. Knowing that I am dealing with the body I gave attention to objects that are directly or indirectly linked to the body. For example, I collected various sizes and colours of carbon paper, needles, threads, items of clothing such as the Burqa, gloves, compasses and things related to the female body. The majority of my experimentation revolved around the body as a performative tool, a navigator, container, canvas or a filter.

In terms of technique and method, my initial focus was on drawing with carbon paper, needles and direct impressions of my hand and body. As I progressed, my interest in the performativity of the body led me to learn new techniques in filming and editing video art, and polishing my knowledge of digital art.

Figure 4.2: Roohi Ahmed, performance for the Chrysalis series, photo-shoot, Sydney, Australia, 2012, See fig. (4.18) 57 For me, photography was a means to retain the fossilised evidence of the performative act, and through photography I could deconstruct the performance and digitally re-stitch it to create a new skin with old memories. I regularly returned to the needle and thread, the simplest of instigators, whether hand or machine manipulated. Stitching with my mother’s old sewing machine was a performative act important to my practice, and I wanted to make a video from this but could not accomplish it within the given time frame.

Figure 4.3: Roohi Ahmed, experiments for second skin, photo-shoot, Sydney, Australia, 2012.

I have been using carbon paper for a while, however, during this research I began to fully explore the potential of this age-old reprographic technique as a device for drawing. Carbon paper has reciprocally allowed me to transfer the actions of my hand or body onto a surface, and in doing so to acquire a history of visual marks gained in the process of depositing the pigment from its surface.

For one specific work, I travelled to the outback in New South Wales to find sand dunes. In the spirit of Ana Mandieta92 I laid down on the loose sand and moved my limbs and simulated the actions of the Vitruvian Man, being careful to get up in a way that would not to disturb the mapping left behind. The resulting works are both personal and immediate. I enjoyed working this way.

Figure 4.4: Roohi Ahmed, record of performative act, for Pareidolia, Perry Sand Hills, Wentworth, Australia, 2012, See fig. (4.11)

92 Cuban American Performance artist (1948 –1985) best known for her "earth-body" artwork.

58 During my MFA candidacy I made three visits to Pakistan and one to New York. The first time I went to Karachi for a solo exhibition titled Hermeneutics of the Body (2012), curated by Nafisa Rizvi at Canvas Gallery. The exhibition gave me a platform to share some of my work that sprung from this research. I later went to New York to take part in an exhibition of Pakistani artists. My second and third visits to Pakistan were due to health reasons, but I managed to produce works there. Most recently, I have exhibited a few that stem from this research in an exhibition in UK.

Figure 4.5: Roohi Ahmed, In-Visibility - work under progress, for an upcoming printmaking exhibition at the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK.

Progress

Over the research period I acquired new ways of approaching technique, and a deeper understanding of my own art practice. The significant skills I learnt were in video making and editing, live drawing, silkscreen printing, and research methodology. My MFA in Sydney has changed my presumptions about myself, and established an acceptance of my self and my physical body as is, regardless of the changes occurring with age and ill health. It has further strengthened some of my beliefs, while changing others. It has given me acceptance of who I am and where I am in the journey of my life. It has also pointed me in new directions for charting and navigating my art practice. One of the more important achievements of this research was the construction of the Blue and Red Field, and the broader use of carbon paper in my practice. At a personal level it provided a deeper understanding of my own art making within my social and global context.

59 Research Outcomes – Discussion of Artworks

My research outcomes include mixed media drawings, videos, objects, and hand and digital prints. In Hands On (2011), Watermark (2011), Blue and Red Field (2012), Liminal Terrain (2012), A Stitch in Time (2012) and Pareidolia (2012) my body holds centre, both as tangible form and by inference. The performative process is integral to the production of these artworks, seen particularly in the video and photographic works Aura (2011), Sew and Sow (2011) and Pareidolia (2012). The production of envelope, veil, and cover compliment each other in various performative acts of mapping and measuring. In fact, process, material and outcome are equally intertwined and balanced. The active participation of the body is evident through the tactile, hands-on three- dimensional interpretation of materials.

Sew and Sow (2011) is a 25 minute video drawing performance. This work is the central piece around which the rest of my works take their position. The performance depicts the sewing of a strand of red thread into the skin of the palm, which is then unravelled. The metaphorical aspect is lucid in that every stitch represents a different aspect of a life journey, the experiences and the events endured and enjoyed during this wandering. Some memories are there to be kept and cherished while others are forsaken. Yet every act and memory becomes part of the archive that is known as the lived body.

Figure 4.6: Roohi Ahmed, stills from the video Sew and Sow. Sydney Australia – 2012.

Sew and Sow examines the conceptual processes, physical gestures, and emotional and personal narratives of marking the body, showing the cartographies that arise from these. The speculative nature of drawing as a medium is explored beyond its linear spatial qualities to amend, extend, and in some instances curtail the topology of my palm. The act of intermediary drawing is preformed using needle and thread. Stitching

60 and unstitching the skin leaves visible, tactile traces as a memory of the actions made by the other hand. This memory evidences the violence performed by the other hand, while it also translates itself into a grotesque poetry that will silently heal, erase and recite itself under fresh skin, only to be drawn again.

In this work Merleau-Ponty’s external world is woven through the fabric of our being, and provides a very beautiful metaphor. Despite its fair share of symbolic and formal similarity with Mike Parr’s and Marina Abramovic’s works, it is not produced to shock. It is a personal and poetic work that intends to elicit both physical and cerebral responses from the onlooker. The simultaneously creates marks and fills them with thread to form lines and boundaries in the palm of my hand. It overwrites, segments and overlaps the natural birth lines. The drawn lines create a map, which refer to the ornamentation of women’s bodies through, for example, henna patterns. But it also trails the lines of fate engraved on our palms, in a futile effort to take possession of fate. The unravelling of the threaded line leaves the pockmarks behind, which signify transitory points of the journey. Eventually these heal and disappear visually, but become part of the memory. This is a kind of mapping that happens side by side with the existing cartography of the palm. Segments of the photographs of this performance are then digitally stitched to form the digital print works Liminal Terrain I & II (2012) and A Stitch in Time I, II & III (2012). These works extend the meaning of skin as body’s boundary, and ties this back to the earlier mappings. These works, in relation to individual and society become a site of struggle that one goes through, and the pain and pleasure endured with it.

Figure 4.7: Liminal Terrain I & II, digital print on archival photo rag paper.

61

Figure 4.8: A Stitch In Time I, II & III, digital print on archival photo rag paper.

Aura (2011) is a digitally collaged video work where my body is present and performing. The work alludes to the Vitruvian Man as an invisible presence rather than a physical geometry; my body is surrounded by needles, which form the shape of a halo or aura. Instead of a male nude, the presence of a covered female body surrounded by needles challenges the construction of art history as a male domain. The spiritual presence of a female located in the centre suggests a deity. This reading is further highlighted by the performance of multiple arms. The figure in this instance becomes a deity, covering a visual history of deism from the fertility goddess of Willendorf, to Hindu goddesses of empowerment, Shakti (power) and Kali (destruction). Paradoxically, the covered female figure also brings forth an idea of the confinement of the female body surrounded by domestic, cultural and religious challenges.

Figure 4.9: Stills from the video Aura – 2011

62 The narrative that begins in Aura is brought full circle in Pareidolia (2013), which is the last photographic print of a performance conducted in this research. Here, the body is fully integrated with the Earth mother, but only its presence through a halo is measured and recorded. The body vanishes, bringing forth the Pareidolia, here only a drawn illusion, or a misperception on sand that involves a vague stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. The resulting image is ambiguous, playing on the viewer’s beliefs, experiences and reflection. This ambiguity is further streamlined in Premonition (2012), where the needles work as a guide for the body to become itself the halo, the void and form. This work is a two dimensional echo of Rebecca Horn’s Measuring Box which was one of the several devices improvised by Horn both for empowering and stressing the vulnerability of the body to forces outside it.93

Figure 4.10: Roohi Ahmed, Premonition – 2012, silkscreen on BFK Reeves.

Both Aura and Pareidolia take the female body as a variable terrain that participates fully in the accumulation or erasure of memory and experience. The desire to negotiate and reclaim surrounding space, or even the land as a religious and political site, is evident here.

93 Causey, Andrew, Sculpture Since 1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998. pg. 165 63

Figure 4.11: Roohi Ahmed, Pareidolia – 2012, print on archival photo rag paper, Sydney, Australia

They measure and chart a well-navigated course of physical history, influenced by the experiences, memories and associations that form consciousness. The body is the first line of defence to concurrently fend off and absorb the myriad external stimuli generated by everyday experience94. And, it is through the body that surrounding space is negotiated and re-claimed. These narratives involve the body as an interpretive tool that perceives the world and acts reflexively as both a tool and site of inscription.

94 Nafisa Rizvi, gallery text, Canvas gallery, Karachi. 64 In Hands On (2011) and Watermark (2011) series, the female body is deconstructed. Parts of the body, hands and mouth, are used to represent the whole body. The hand at the end of the arm either validates or rejects intake and reaction. In these works, the hand with its palm-outward gesticulation keeps an arm’s length of a distance between the audience and the self, maintaining the autonomy of personal space. And yet there is an offering to enter that space with caution and hesitation95.

Figure 4.12: Roohi Ahmed, Watermark series – 2011, body impressions on carbon paper.

95 Nafisa Rizvi, gallery text, Canvas gallery, Karachi. 65 The artist’s hands are important here. The carbon paper is crudely used for rubbing and taking and leaving impressions, and I repeatedly and silently perform the actions of my ‘lived body’ through touching, scratching, chewing and rubbing. Drawn hands created through rubbing and watermarking carbon paper alludes to the repetitive yet pure nature of the performativity of drawing. This repetition is a two way process. On one hand, marks are made on the paper, whereas it also becomes the second skin of the artist after being etched with the forced impressions of fingerprints. The disembodied images of drawn hands and the impression of mouth and palms directly on the carbon paper are the direct means to measure and map the body. During the course of this mapping, the signature, hand impressions, finger prints, denture impressions and saliva residue become a conceptual consumption for “an instigation of authorship, the hand that makes the signature – anonymous, yet presumed to be that of the artist – become part of post- modern deconstruction of movement and intentionality.”96

The carbon paper is used to its full extent, both in terms of its pigment and ability to record events, in Blue and Red Field (2012) and Blue and Red Field Construction (2012). Here the archaic reprographic medium mirrors the reflexive quality of the skin. A textural field is rubbed onto the paper, requiring laborious and repetitive movements, resulting in a personal engagement of mark making in many respects. The carbon paper takes the place of paint, ink or pigment, as the hand becomes brush or tool. The action is drawn but the result is luminescent and painterly. Incessant rubbing creates layered marks that echo the rendering (pardakht) of miniature painting. The blue and red fields allude to the color of existence and non-existence, breath and silence. The drawing process in this work is meditative and cathartic; the resulting blue field is an elegant adaption of Anish Kapoor’s Void that invites contemplation, and Yves Klein’s Blue field that marks the human body as brands.

The carbon paper, layered with waxy pigment on the surface, picks up the delicate texture of the fingerprints and creates a pattern. The transfer of imprint between carbon paper and skin emphasises the boundary, the point of contact between inner and outer worlds.

96 Bruno Munari, quoted in Calude Lichenstein and Alfredo W. Haberli, Far vedere L’aria, Making Air Visible: A Visual Reader on Bruno Munari (Zurich: Musuem Fur Gestaltung Zurich, 2000) p.41 .. quoted by Catherise Zehlga in Online page 195. 66

Figure 4.13: Blue Field and Red Field – 2011, carbon pigment on Arches

The fingerprints, recorded through impression and rubbing, start from one point on the paper and spill out as though limitless. The fusion of skin, paper, and world creates a map that not only exposes but also covers private and public. Rubbed off their pigment, the carbon become a ‘second skin’ marked with fingerprints as the memory of hand and body. This second skin when attached through a threaded line attaches meaning to the space in Blue and Red Field Construction (2011). The result is a patchwork Chaddor (veil/membrane) that simultaneously camouflages and reveals the female body as a ‘supplementary’ and ‘desired’ object.

Figure 4.14: Blue Field process and surface detail

67

Figure 4.15: Blue Field Construction and Red Field Construction – 2011, carbon paper and thread.

The camouflaged or veiled body, such as that included in Rumour Has It (2011), is analogous to the larger body of humanity and its vulnerability and resilience in the face of adversity. Fingerprints are a way to identify and locate oneself, and the knowing of oneself leads to a knowing of others. The sensory conduits of the body come together in this work to interpret the value of events, relationships, associations, loss or pain. And through faculties of reasoning these stimuli are transformed into a coherent response that eventually results in altered life patterns. 68

Figure: 4.16: Rumour Has It – 2011, carbon pigment on paper.

In the course of the research, the veiled body further transformed into wrapped bundles. This stems from a personal belief that the human body has many aspects and need not be represented literally in order to be recognisable. When the physicality of human form is taken out of the equation, memories, experiences, and emotions are left behind, which one attempts to tie up into neat bundles. I explored the symbolic nuances of the body as a bundle in the Consciousness, Perception and Recognition series (2012) (Fig. 4.17). The discordance of the contents makes it hard to do so and elements of the past and present keep slipping away.

Figure 4.17: Left to Right, Consciousness I (75.3 x 41.6 cm), Perception II (42 x 59.4 cm) & Recognition I (21 x 29.7 cm) – 2012. Carbon pigment on paper.

The works discussed here are similar to a choreographed performance. They result in poetic and cathartic works of contemplation, extreme works of endurance and shock,

69 and an unlearning that arrives at a history told through the body, which is viewed as the site through and on which history is performed.

Figure 4.18: Chrysalis I, II & III, digital print on archival photo rag paper.

70 CONCLUSION

Throughout this research the arm’s length has been used as a unit of measurement to chalk out a space around myself. I realised that an arm’s length is a personal space and an idea that defines who I am. And the sanctity of this bounded space is of the utmost importance. It becomes a means to locate myself in relation to others, establishing, examining and re-examining relationships.

Looking at the body, space and performativity, it is important to point out that I have mapped out perceptual interactions and bodily responses to my immediate surroundings, which include animate and inanimate objects and bodies. This condition brings together harmonious and disharmonious interactions through which I chart the course of my journey. Like any other individual, my body is historically, culturally, socially, religiously and politically placed. So my responses to everything that inhabits the enveloping space around me are derived from this position.

In sitting down to write this conclusion, I note the coincidence that today happens to be ‘Woman’s Day’ (8th March), which is being marked across the world. This highlights another measure to acknowledge the ostracising of the female body. We mark and measure in order to chart a clear path for arriving somewhere, but these can also veil and camouflage certain aspects of the journey. Taking account of this, one recent harrowing incident stands out in my mind: the gang rape of a young girl by five men in New Delhi, India on December 16 2012, which subsequently resulted in her death97. This brutal violation of the female body harks back to countless other horrendous acts taking place all over the world. In South Asian countries such as India and Pakistan there is the mutilation of girls’ and women’s faces with acid, or their murder in the name of honour and land ownership. Every time such news appears, I am unable to bring myself to read the gruesome details of the occurrence. However the impact of the gang rape case was much worse than looking at images of fictional and factual dead bodies thrown at us by the media.

97 A young woman travelling with a male companion was allegedly gang-raped by six male individuals on a bus and she and her companion were badly beaten up and thrown out of the bus. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20765364 71 On impulse I searched for the United Nations’ message for this year’s Woman’s Day. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s 2013 message began with a question, citing this same incident: “… As we commemorate International Women’s Day, we must look back on a year of violence against women and girls and ask ourselves how to usher in a better future . . . One young woman was gang-raped to death. Another committed suicide out of a sense of shame that should have attached to the perpetrators. Young teens were shot at close range for daring to seek education . . .”98

Such brutal violation of physical and psychological space makes me wonder about the paradox of progress associated with the twenty-first century. We still speak about ushering in a better future for women, while not talking about time-locked male thinking about female bodies as passive objects, which have the potential to be violated. Thirteen years into the twenty-first century and we have still not been able to traverse far into understanding male/female coexistence. Eve is still ‘imperfect’ and ‘supplementary’.

Unfortunately incidents of violence against women are not restricted to so-called underdeveloped countries. The more I read about such occurrences the more it strengthens my resolve that only a system which is divine and higher than the whims of man can regulate his animalistic and barbaric nature. A system where acknowledgment of the arm’s length of a space establishes the liminal area that is required to generate understanding and respect between individuals.

During the course of my MFA, I started with taking measure of myself in relation to my space. In due course I could see the various mappings of my performative acts taking shape. These gradually made sense of my placement, displacement and replacement, bringing them within arm’s length. While doing so I realised that I covered a major area of understanding, knowing the span of my personal space and its boundaries, its limitations and flexibilities, its vulnerabilities and its strengths. The understanding of drawing played an integral part in this process. I navigated through new territories and mapped new creative potential in my practice, with no dependence on other media. Such findings are both liberating and reflective of a desire to slow down, clarify, or isolate perception and attention.

98 UN Secretary General’s Women’s day message 2013 http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/sgsmessage.shtml, Accessed on 08 March 2013 72

The two years spent in Sydney for my MFA have been an important transient phase in my personal growth as a person and an artist. During these two years I experienced a number of health-related afflictions, and I equate this phase with that of a chrysalis; cocooned within the geography of Sydney for a liminal timeframe, nourished by an environment of academia and art, and constrained by ill-health and the failings of my physical body. As an optimist, I see this research as an opportunity to draw up all the resources that are going to bring me through this phase of life. As an artist and a Muslim woman growing older and richer in experience, I want to make art that is an authentic reflection of my lived experience.

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ONLINE

A dead man in Kafan (Islamic shroud). http://nuralhayat.tumblr.com A sleeping bag for women. http://gearjunkie.com/rei-flash-34-womens-sleeping-bag A Muslim impression of Jesus and Mary in a Persian miniature showing an aura as flames. http://www.eslam.de/begriffe/m/maria.htm Aboriginal rock painting representing hands and boomerangs. Carnarvon Gorge, Queensland, Australia. http://www.auswalk.com.au/walks/carnarvon-gorge/ Adam and Eve (detail) as depicted in Manafi al-Hayawan (Useful Animals), 1294-99 Iran, http://www.picturesfromhistory.com/index.gallery.php?gid=20&img=376 Ahmed Mater, Magnetism I, photograuve etching print http://ahmedmater.com/artwork/magnetism/prints/magnetism-photograuve-i/ Aisha Khalid, Conversation – 2002, double channel video 120 minutes. http://courses.washington.edu/femart/final_project/wordpress/aisha-khalid/ Aisha Khalid, Larger Than Life – 2012, http://hannahleightonboyce.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/whitworth-art-gallery-aisha-khalid-larger- than-life/, accessed 23 March 2013. Arm’s Length Transactions “Both parties in the deal are acting in their own self-interest and are not subject to any pressure or duress from the other party.” http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/armslength.asp#axzz2HDyguaE0 “Arm’s length agreement/affidavit, arm’s length pricing, arm’s length prejudice, and arm’s length debt” http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.aspx?doc=/content/22624.htm&page=49 Art exchange project Aar Par 2000.

76 http://aarpaar2.tripod.com/00.htm Aura, the energy field of luminous radiation that surrounds a person and is imperceptible to most human beings. University of Granada (2012, May 4). ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com- /releases/2012/05/120504110024.htm Brides outstretched hands and feet drying henna. http://perfecthennadesign.blogspot.com.au, & http://hennabycolleen.wordpress.com Bourdon, David. An Eccentric Body Art. 1984. http://image.nun.unsw.edu.au/reserve_reprints/cache9/013537539. Calligraphic diagrams of the letters alif and ain using the proportional system based on the rhombic Nuqta. http://www.metmuseum.org/learn/for-educators/publications-for-educators/art-of-the- islamic-world/unit-two/proportional-scripts Convert Units. "Measurement Unit Conversion: Arms-Length." http://www.convertunits.com/info/arms-length David Wojnarowicz, stills from A Fire in My Belly – 1986-1987, colour and B & W, silent, Super 8mm film on video. http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/string/string-art-history-3.html de Vignemont, Frederique. Bodily Awareness. 2011. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/bodily-awareness/. Diagram of Edward T. Hall's personal reaction bubbles (1966), showing radius in feet, http://psychology.about.com/od/nonverbalcommunication/ss/understanding-body-language_8.htm During, J., and R. Sellheim. Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition. Ed. P. Bearman, T. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. Van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs. Brill Online, 2010. Encyclopedia Britannica Company. "Arm's Length." In Merium-Webster Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arm%27s%20length Enlèvement d'Europe painted by French artist Nöel-Nicolas Coypel in 1726-1727. Philadelphia Museum of Art, http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/Europe Fifteen roundels in three columns with saints and their attributes and the Virgin and Christ child above center, Engraving 1500-1525 http://www.britishmuseum.org/system_pages/beta_collection_introduction/beta_collection_object_d etails.aspx?objectId=1498234&partId=1&searchText=saints/ Farlex. "Logos." In The Free Dictionary. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Logos Farlex. "Length." In The Free Dictionary - Idioms. http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/length Ibn Arabi http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/ibn-arabi/. Images from an active millimetre wave body scanner. https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/pi-statement-on-proposed-deployments-of-body- scanners-in-airports-0 http://www.businessinsider.com/tsa-will-remove-its-controversial-nude-body-scanners-from-all-us- airports-2013-1#ixzz2LE251gMn Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaykh to Kings From the St. Petersburg Album signed by Bichitr, ca. 1620, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1600_1699/jahangir/ jahangirsufi/jahangirsufi.html/ Jewish rug depicting Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,made in the Marbadiah Carpet Factory, Jerusalem, 1920s (cotton and wool) / Private Collection /The Bridgeman Art Library. http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/104321/ Kaali or Durga Seated on Shiva Surrounded by a flaming nimbus, Ganesh, Skanda & Devotees, http://laxmibronzein.monkport.com/kali_durga6.html Lenore Tawney, In Utero –1985. Chair and fabric. http://www.modernedition.com/artarticles/string/string-art-history-3.html, Lenore Tawney, Box of Falling Stars –1984. http://museumuesum.tumblr.com/page/111 Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man – c. 1490 pen and ink with wash over metal point on paper, http://www.theredheadriter.com/2012/05/artist-leonardo-da-vinci-53-interesting-facts/ Map of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bangladesh_War_of_Independence Marina Abramovic, (sewn lips of Ulay) Talking about Similarity – 1976. http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/string/string-art-history-3.html Marshal, Andrew, “To Live and Die in Karachi,” Time Magazine, Jan 16, 2012. Source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2103706,00.html

77 Masaccio, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (detail), ca.1425, Branacci Chapel. http://historylists.org/art/10-finest-works-of-the-early-italian-renaissance-art.html Mike Parr, Integration 3 (Leg spiral) –1975, printed 2001, 4 gelatine silver photographs http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/99.2001.a-d/ Mike Parr, Close The Concentration Camps – 2002, performance http://shermangalleries.shermanscaf.org.au/artists/inartists/image_pop.asp%3Fimage=341.html Mona Hatoum, Corps Étranger – 1994. Video installations / endoscopies. http://artphalt.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/mona-hatoum-entrails-appeal/ Monarch butterfly chrysalis about to hatch http://texasbutterflyranch.com/2012/01/13/butterfly-faq-pros-and-cons-of-tropical-milkweed-and- what-to-do-with-a-winter-monarch-butterfly-caterpillar-or-chrysalis/ Naiza Khan. Henna Hands (detail) – 2000, http://www.naizakhan.com/gallery/henna-hands-site- specific-project-cantonment-railway-station-1/#!prettyPhoto[henna-hands-site-specific-project- cantonment-railway-station]/7/ Pilgrims performing tawaf around Ka’ba during Hajj, http://blog.britishmuseum.org/category/exhibitions/hajj-journey-to-the-heart-of-islam/ Quran-e-Karim, English Translation by Justice Mufti Taqi Usmani, http://archive.org/details/QuranWithEnglishTranslationByTaqiUsmani Reaction of two people whose personal spaces are in conflict. http://www.findingtheworld.com/why-everyone-has-a-personal-space/ Risham Syed, The Seven Seas – 2012, seven quilts. http://www.abraajcapitalartprize.com/artworks.php Seated Buddha from Gandhara, Pakistan, about 2nd - 3rd century AD. (c) British Museum, London, http://www.britishmuseum.org/learning/schools_and_teachers/sessions/sddc_ multimedia_magic.aspx/ Shirin Neshat, Stripped – 1995. http://www.ivorypress.com/cphoto/es/photographer/shirin Space Shuttle space suit – 1983 http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/spacesuits/historygallery/shuttle-index.html The custom of veiling observed in the last two weeks of Lent in Catholic tradition, http://orbiscatholicussecundus.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/catholic-culture-veiling-statues-on.html, http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009_03_01_archive.html The Sema of the Mevlevi". Mevlevi Order of Americahttp://www.hayatidede.org/popups/about_sema.htm. Top End Sports. "Fitness Testing - Arm Length." http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/arm-length.htm TSA will Remove Its Controversial 'Nude' Body Scanners From All US Airports. http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/tsa-remove-controversial-full-body-scanners-1B8038882 Two people not affecting each other's personal space. http://www.findingtheworld.com/why-everyone-has-a-personal-space/ Veiling in different cultures and traditions http://www.salebridaldresses.com,http://www.thephotographer.in/darkroom/showthread.php?t=576, http://civicdilemmas.facinghistory.org/content/brief-history-veil-islam William Hunter, Table 11 & 12, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/hunterw_home.html !

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