Ayessha Quraishi . Recorded Time . Koel Gallery, 2017

2017

recorded time

4 person show | Koel Gallery
Curated by Sadia Salim

Brain O'Doherty compares a gallery space with a Palaeolithic painted cave, an Egyptian tomb and a medieval church - spaces that are sealed off from the outside world, "untouched by time and its vicissitudes". 'Recorded Time' is an artistic project that sets off to challenge some of these notions as it functions as an open studio and a gallery space. It considers the notion of site specificity, the gallery as a contested space, and of looking out from inside this space and vice versa.

Four artists with disparate practices are part of this project. Ayessha Quraishi is a seasoned artist whose practice hinges on being felt or sensed as she negotiates physical and abstract spaces. Sara Pagganwala's recent works are performance based where her body plays a pivotal role in creation and participation. Yasser Vayani works with the everyday objects to create installations with multiples that seek to subvert commercialization in art. Sarah Hashmi collects data in the form of objects and oral histories from those who experienced partition of the subcontinent and subsequent migration to Pakistan.

Beginning on December 13, 2016, at Koel Gallery, Recorded Time aims to give artists a space to investigate their practices as they dialogue with each other and those passing by in a communal and interactive set up.

Sadia Salim

Ayessha Quraishi has an established art practice spanning almost three decades. Her home studio is a meditative place where she spends long hours well into the solitude of the night with her work. As she goes off to sleep her paintings are the last things she sees and the first as she wakes up. Observing Ayessha work (in the gallery space) is itself a meditative process as the artist, her space and paintings closely interact with each other. The precision with which she prepares her surfaces and interrupts that precision when paint touches the surface, the movement of her hands and the act of creating repetitive strokes, expound the underlying rhythm. And it is the rhythm of her process that takes the lead as paintings start to emerge. She connects her creative process to a number of other human processes such as creating music or offering prayer, and equates the recorded time to various kinds of recordings - of sound, of the movement of the earth and of recording a mark.

A moment is created with the confluence of senses, the light filtering through the space, the sound of a conversation, the odours and flavours - the kind of energy the artist taps into that allows the paintings to materialize. In the current body of work, her paintings are layered by accumulation and erasure of paint - the repetitive processes that are filtered through her senses. Ayessha's work is silent and facilitates the viewers to hear the sounds captured from certain moments in time and space.

Sadia Salim