In a show that took place in September last year at AAN Art Space and Museum, artist and educationalist Sadia Salim addresses ecological concerns through a commentary on man’s toxic relationship with land—articulated within a subjective exploration that lends itself to broader interpretations. Revisiting her grandfather’s abandoned village home, in Chak 17/P at the edge of the Cholistan Desert, Salim presents a fascinating collection of archival material that charts a very personal history, contextualized through anecdotes of rediscovery materialized in letters addressed to her father. Books, household objects, maps, documents, letters, and photographs taken by the artist come together to create an interesting case study of sorts that allows the audience to become acquainted with this piece of land and its inhabitants.

Our connection to place is both complicated to understand, yet simple in its universality. Like any animal species, we seek safety, shelter, and stability to proliferate and safeguard our present and the future generations. However, while most animals choose their habitat and remain within those spaces, upholding ecological balance, man spreads across the land, invades, occupies, and colonizes in search of greener pastures and more rewarding prospects. As we settle and acquire a sense of belonging and ownership, time gives shape to memories and sentimental attachments; yet we always strive for ‘more and better’— for abundance, with a disregard for the ecological implications of these ambitions.

This very commentary evolves in Salim’s textual works comprising a series of letters written to her father in Urdu, detailing her experiences of visiting her childhood home in the village. The letters, which are printed and displayed in the gallery, unfold a commentary with great subtlety hidden within the nuances of her narration as well as the choice of documents, maps, books, found objects and photographs on display. The small village and its history (documentation of its formation, expansion, and establishment of facilities, amenities, and infrastructure) become evidence of how more and more land is colonized in the name of progress. Her descriptions highlight how the landscape has changed over the years since her last visit: how there are roads where there were none before, how brick houses have replaced mud ones, and how some people have even built boundary walls with metal gates as seen commonly in cities.

Especially telling is her account of an evening when she set off on the single road leading out of Chak 17/P, and ended up at what she calls Pehelvan ki Abadi. Here Pehelvan invited her into his small one-room clay and wood house, the barren simplicity of which she describes in great detail. The conversation with Pehelvan centers around infrastructural developments and their capitalist impacts. He talks about having to now pay for goods he could have easily acquired beforehand, and having to worry about losing his land due to its increasing value.  As the artist discusses the ownership and distribution of land, some bought and paid for while others handed out by her father or taken over by settlers, one is struck by the arbitrary rules by which such an important matter was decided, and how a natural resource that belongs to no one is claimed and distributed. Through this, Salim hints towards the complex ecological affects of progress.

It is also interesting the way she describes the women’s interactions with her, their inquisitiveness pertaining to the artist’s marital status and relationship to her travel companions, which cause a bit of discomfort to Salim. The artist, however, tries to understand and empathize with this, considering opposing worldviews, exposures and values. She especially considers the power dynamics and her position as a stranger coming into their home with a camera, asking questions, implicating the idea of invasion of space and the exoticization of a people through a patronizing gaze that may lead to a sense of othering. This adds a subtextual inquiry from a postcolonial perspective.

All this is set against a much older history of the transformation of this land through climatic and geological shifts. It brings into question the role we have to play in these shifts and the prolonged effects of our activities on the land that we carry such affinity for. She explains Vedic scriptures mentioning the existence of a river that once flowed through Cholistan. Named after the goddess of creativity and knowledge, the Saraswati River is thought to be a myth, yet there is evidence of a river emerging from the Himalayas and/or fed by the monsoon having flowed through the desert hundreds of years ago, which eventually dried up due to climatic and geological shifts. –“…as Nadimata became Vinasana, the land gradually transformed to a desert,” she elaborates, “Remarkably, the first settlements of the Harrapan Civilization were built on the dried beds of the lost river. The rising sea, on the other hand, is the sign of our extractive use of the land and its resources. The climate continues to change as we superficially repair the rising level of salinity that destroys everything it touches on the land.”

Thus, the artist links past to present, and a plausible future to critique our problematic relationship with land. In a world of rapidly transforming ecology and politics, the question over ownership arises: who has the right to land? And, what role do we play in propelling these transformations, which in turn impact our relationship with it? Her commentary, thus, instigates a process of decolonization.

In light of recent global events, some of this commentary on occupation, devastation, loss and ecology has become all the more pertinent, and manifests itself in the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza— which has very much emerged from the occupation of land and a form of settler-colonization. The resulting ethnic cleansing that has followed over the last eighty years has intensified in the last two months and has devastated the very land that the oppressors claim to hold dear. While the consequences are far more pronounced and dire for Palestine, the ideas Salim is positing through her work are very similar; “our relationship to ‘place’ at a time of rapidly transitioning ecology, as we observe a continuous and aggressive occupation of the land under the garb of progress and prosperity,” she says in her statement.

The archival material serves a dual purpose here; while chronicling the expansion and progress of a small village, it simultaneously highlights the ephemerality of our existence by virtue of acting as a memorial of sorts to an abandoned family home and the lives that were once attached with it. Her photographs and found objects seek beauty in loss and decay, which as a concept can present a problematic position, yet becomes a profound tool of preservation and remembrance in this particular case.

Some of this accumulated knowledge dates back almost a hundred years, and the artist admits that much of it had succumbed to the tests of time. It brings into focus the fleeting nature of all that we strive for. Like the lost river, our time here is also temporary, yet for its sake we colonize and devastate the land. Through the “aesthetic of neglect, loss, and decay”, as Salim calls it, we are reminded what we often forget and makes us question what it is we are really fighting for, as our time here is finite and soon, we too will be swallowed into the land we so confidently claim, lost to the sands of time.

‘The Lost River and the Rising Sea’, a solo exhibition of Sadia Salim, was displayed at AAN Art Space and Museum, Karachi, from 21^st September till 19^th October 2023.

Title image: Rohi Dreams, archival image, engraved plexiglass, neon lights, edition of 3., 11 x 18 inches, 2023