Harun al Rashid Mollah’s artwork is an archive of memories.
Rashid is from Uluberia in Howrah, West Bengal. He began his artistic journey at the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship, Kolkata, and pursued a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the S.N School of Arts & Communication, University of Hyderabad in 2023.
I got to see his work in Final Display, the graduate students’ exhibition at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication in University of Hyderabad in 2023. The display titled Remembering Ruby took me down the memory lane of my fieldwork days in 2015 with Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Museum of Innocence (2009). Thus, archival records, stuff, artworks, photographs, books, and memories connect us in different crossroads of time.
Remembering Ruby by Harun al Rashid, 2023. Photo: Harun al Rashid .
Rashid’s artistic practice revolves around the objects and memories associated with his familial experiences. The 20 pages of his exhibition Remembering Ruby share affinities with a miniature painting album. Rashid displays a page the way a leaf of a miniature album is usually displayed in contemporary museums.
The series was created with pages from old and damaged books Rashid found in his grandfather’s cabinet. He layered the book pages to create a translucent surface that could bear the force of needling, drawing, writing and collaging. On each page, he made a miniature baby frock. The frock’s silhouette is designed to resemble the mulmul fabric. The process of creation embodies imagination, while the fragrance of papers, broken lines of Bengali poetry and prose, and miniature frocks embody his emotion.
Incomplete lines in Bengali on a leaf (see image below) read: “O messenger, your friends are on all ten sides. Your friend-lover spreads black tresses across the heart in a rhythm…”. It is part poem, part imagination.
A detail from Remembering Ruby by Harun al Rashid, 2023. Photo: Harun al Rashid .
Remembering Ruby is also Rashid’s story of his aunt whom he never met or saw in a photograph. She died as a little girl. Ruby stored her belongings in a suitcase, thus keeping her presence alive. His unseen aunt’s belongings inspired him to weave his poetic imagination and create an afterlife for her.
Thus, Remembering Ruby is a survival of an enduring termination. We keep our loved one’s belongings alive in our memories through personal archives. The novel The Museum of Innocence has it that objects are potent symbols of love, time, and memories. Despite these efforts, however, the essence of memories are elusive and forever slipping from our grip. Joyous moments are still points that cannot be recaptured. Rashid’s artwork takes us into the lives of things after departure.
Resonance of Land by Harun al Rashid, 2023. Photo: Harun Al Rashid
Another work, titled Resonance of Land, unveils ways of layering pages as if something is hiding underneath. On the surface, he embroiders forms, patterns and stitches – like a hashiya of a miniature painting. Resonance of Land is an interplay between new lives and discarded and undesired objects by recreating a book of memories.
His embroidery in knotted pearl techniques, the twisting threads, and the impression of pricks and piercing needles on paper create beautiful patterns, flowers, pathways and maps and an uneasiness as well. At first glance, you notice that the beautiful embroidery is beneath Bengali text that translates to “dramatic music.” It encourages you to read the work as a play of needle and threads on paper. The smeared text underneath the embroidery creates curiosity. There is a fleeting moment of happiness and a concealed sense of loss, love and land.
The juxtaposition of threads, objects and memory from the past are like relics that reflect the significant changes we undergo. W.J.T. Mitchell in his What do Pictures Really Want? (2005) emphasises an intimate and complex relationship between humans and pictures. He argues that a picture is a powerful agency of emotions, provokes thoughts and communicates quietly. It requires emotional activity so we can understand the complexity of its multilayered nature. If we read Resonance of Land from this perspective, working with the old books and buried memories becomes a way of making space for other memories.
Reading comics is a nostalgia of our childhood. Rashid’s Untitled, (see image at the top) is an installation work with the old cassette-boxes, cutouts from comic journals and newspaper. The paper cuttings are all related to news on minorities and violence on them, including on children. He synthesises visual elements – comic and newspaper cutouts – with the empty cassette boxes that were integral to tape recorders. These cassette boxes also hold many memories.
The juxtaposition of objects associated with sweet memories and the news on children’s death reflect the agony in Rashid’s work. The cassette boxes were empty except for the silence of screams.
Shaista Anwar is a PhD scholar in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Hyderabad.
