It’s a curious twist of fate when you discover that not only do you share a name — with just a slight variation in spelling — with a renowned artist across the border, but you also share the same birth year!

I vividly remember two memorable instances from the 1980s and 1990s that highlighted this coincidence. In 1984, my husband and I entered the Taj Hotel in Mumbai with our two young children. To our surprise, a poster in the lobby announced an exhibition by artist Rummana Hussain (1952–1999). We exchanged amused glances and enjoyed her art, all the while savouring the peculiar synchronicity of it all.

In 1993, after my husband Mukhtar Husain penned an article for Inside Outside, a Mumbai-based design and architecture magazine, about Karachi’s new airport, the Jinnah Terminal, of which he was the Chief Architect, I found myself in Mumbai on a visit. Mukhtar had asked me to drop by the office of the magazine’s editor, Ms. Sheila Shahani, as a courtesy. As I arrived at her office in Nariman Point and gave my card to the receptionist, I overheard her excitedly announcing to the editor that “Rummana Hussain” was here. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I realised Ms. Shahani was in for a surprise — she was expecting the famed artist, but instead was greeted by me.

I was inspired to write this article after a recent encounter on LinkedIn, where an Indian artist reached out and asked, “Are you the same Rumana who worked at Lalit Kala Akademi, Keyatala, in 1984-85 alongside Paritosh Sen and Sambuddha Dutta Gupta?” This made me realize that many in India, let alone in Pakistan, particularly among the younger generation of artists, are not familiar with her work. My contact admitted that while he had heard rumors of her passing, he didn’t believe them until he came across “me” on LinkedIn! This interaction highlighted just how much her legacy needs to be remembered and shared.

Rummana Hussain made her entry into the art world in the 1980s, gaining early recognition for her allegorical figurative work in oil and watercolor. She ultimately turned to installations, sculptures, and performance art, through which she grappled with the complexities and privileges of her identity. As a Muslim living in a predominantly Hindu country, she used her body as a medium to engage with the broader socio-political landscape. This shift in her practice came about with the 1992 demolition of the 16th-century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by right-wing Hindu militants and the subsequent communal violence in Bombay (now Mumbai), where she resided at the time. The destruction of the historic mosque sparked violent communal riots across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Mumbai was one of the hardest-hit cities, with over 2,000 lives lost in the violence.

Hussain was provoked into activism by making a sharp departure from her painterly works. Despite using her identity to interrogate issues of secularism, gender, and privilege, she held firm to the belief that she was not the “other” in India. Instead, she saw herself as a custodian of the discourse on belonging, perpetually navigating the fluid and unsettled terrain of identity.

Ram Rahman, a photographer and close friend of Hussain, notes that while Islam was more of a cultural influence than a religious one in her life, it unexpectedly became central to both her personal journey and her artistic expression in later years. He has also described Hussain as “completely bohemian, a progressive thinker, and a strong feminist, with a very different persona to her partner.” Her husband, who worked for the major Indian corporation TATA, was transferred to the eastern state of Bihar in the early 1980s, but Hussain chose to move to Delhi, where she began a four-year stint at the Garhi Studios, an artists’ facility supported by the state-run Lalit Kala Akademi.

Hussain’s later works have direct Islamic references such as her installation ‘Home/Nation’ at Gallery Chemould in 1996, and ‘Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal’ in 1997 and later at Talwar Gallery and Institute of Arab and Islamic Art in New York.

In an article titled “Rummana Hussain“ written by Jyoti Dhar¹, published on the Talwar Gallery website in September/October 2014 (the gallery, owned by Deepak Talwar, has been representing Hussain’s estate and collection since 2008), she mentions that it was during her time at Garhi Studios that Hussain began connecting with prominent figures in the Indian contemporary art scene, including painter Manjit Bawa, renowned sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee, and fellow feminist artist Navjot Altaf. She was particularly influenced by the prevailing trend toward figuration in Indian contemporary art, a movement heavily driven by the ‘Baroda school of artists’ associated with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University. Mukherjee and Altaf, who worked in neighboring studios at Garhi, would often critique her neo-expressionist works. It was a lively studio environment of the 1980s India, where artists would gather to debate ideas, art, and literature for hours. Hussain herself drew heavily from the works of playwright Bertolt Brecht and painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, as seen in pieces like When Evil Doing Comes Like Falling Rain, Nobody Calls Out Stop’ (c. 1989-90), which depicts a grim scene of human suffering, featuring a mountain of heads and bat-like figures soaring over a chaotic landscape. She masterfully blended myth, metaphor, and allegory with the harsh realities of contemporary life to convey powerful social critiques. In Big Fish Eat Little Fish-1 (1989), she offers a stark critique of India’s capitalist and caste systems. The painting features two indistinct figures rowing a small boat by moonlight across a murky, dangerous sea. Their fear is palpable as they witness a massive fish devour smaller ones, a striking metaphor for the exploitation inherent in social hierarchies. Similarly, The Angel and Colaba (1990) reflects her recurring concerns, set against another shadowy, aquatic backdrop — this time at the bustling Colaba fishing docks in Mumbai. Fishermen haul carts of goods while gaunt, nearly naked figures and stray animals occupy a nearby street. Overhead, a bronzed angel with radiant, fuchsia wings carries a woman’s shadowy form through the sky, seemingly whisking her away from the bleakness below. Both works encapsulate Hussain’s ability to intertwine symbolism with urgent social commentary.

It must be mentioned that before the Babri Masjid debacle, the explosive rise of Hindutva fundamentalism during the1970s and 1980s triggered a growing wave of communal unrest that left deep scars on Hussain’s personal life and eventually reshaped her entire artistic trajectory. Two key events during this period profoundly impacted her. The first was the savage, public assassination of Safdar Hashmi (1954-1989), a political activist, poet, actor and playwright. He was the founding member of the street theatre group Jana Natya Manch².

Hashmi was Pakistan’s celebrated actor Sania Saeed’s uncle. His murder sent shockwaves through India’s creative and activist circles. Later, in 1990, Hussain’s first cousin was fatally stabbed by two Hindu men outside a mosque in Hyderabad after evening prayers — a blow that struck much closer to home.

In the aftermath, Rummana became part of the Sahmat Collective (The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust), a vibrant group of artists, writers, and curators led by figures like Ram Rahman, Geeta Kapur, and Vivan Sundaram. Their mission was to champion secularism and pluralism through art. Sahmat organised numerous exhibitions, rallies, and protest performances throughout India, with one of their most influential campaigns, ‘Artists Against Communalism’, taking place in 1991.

All this had deeply affected Hussain on a personal level. Her Muslim identity, previously something she hadn’t openly grappled with, now left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Her family was forced to leave their home in Colaba’s Somerset House, and even remove their nameplate to avoid being targeted. Eventually, they moved to a hotel. Hussain therefore emerged as a critical organiser for Sahmat in Mumbai, spearheading local events. Notable among her efforts were an exhibition where Mumbai taxi drivers painted slogans promoting communal harmony on their cabs, a concert at Shivaji Park, and mural projects with artists like M.F. Hussain.

Sahmat also held a 17-hour festival of Sufi and Bhakti music in January 1993, intended to foster tolerance and spiritual unity. The title of the event, “Anhad Garje,” was drawn from the poetry of the medieval Sufi Sant Kabir Das (1440-1518). The phrase translates to “the silence reverberates” and evokes the concept of the eternal, unstruck sound of the universe – Anhad Naad. In Kabir’s poetry, this sound is metaphorically housed within a clay pot, symbolizing the vessel of the cosmos and divinity. The gathering’s spiritual essence was underscored by the renowned Indian classical singer Shubha Mudgal, who opened and closed the event with a rendition of Anhad Garje, imbuing the occasion with profound cultural and spiritual resonance. Hussain was further moved by this event, which, besides poetry and music, also had academic discussions. The following month, she wrote in India’s newspaper, The Independent: “It’s necessary to emerge from our insular shells, to come together and try and develop symbols of secularism . . . a coming together of artists and viewers is a form of public participation, one that emphasises the commonality of all.”

Having grown up in a secular household where Hussain never wore a burqa or took a chadar, this sudden awareness of her religious identity shook her. Ram Rahman, her close friend and fellow Sahmat artist, remarked that this forced confrontation with her identity profoundly altered her work in an incredibly short period of time.

Hussain was born in 1952 to a highly privileged and politically active family from Lucknow, which shaped her understanding of politics and helped appreciate the idea of the freedom of thought and speech. Her mother was a Congress Member of Parliament while her father was a General in the Indian army, and was the first Commandant of the National Defence Academy in Pune. She studied Fine Art in Ravensborne College of Art and Design, England, and after she graduated in 1974, she returned to India to marry a businessman named Ishaat Hussain. In the mid-1980s, Rummana lived in Calcutta where she found a mentor in Paritosh Sen, working with him in his studio.

Striving to craft a more urgent feminist and conceptual language, she abandoned her sketchbook as she was disillusioned by the limitations of figurative painting, and turned to working with material objects and symbols. As she juggled the demands of finishing her Fine Arts degree at the University of Calcutta while caring for her young daughter, Shazmeen, she began to incorporate domestic objects into her practice. In a 1994 interview, she explained the shift, noting how necessity had pushed her to explore the political significance of everyday materials³.

In her article mentioned previously, Jyoti Dhar references a quote from Hussain’s friend, Pushpamala N. who is a performance artist. Pushpamala reflects on how Hussain’s family had been deeply influenced by various leftist cultural organizations that shaped their worldview and artistic sensibilities. She mentions that these awareness sprang “from the progressive movements of the 1930s onward, including the Indian People’s Theatre Association and the Progressive Writers’ Association, both of which were associated with the Communist Party of India. This cultural milieu provided the basis for many post-Independence artists’ political orientations, and Hussain’s close friendships with members of these semi-activist groups certainly contributed to her own progressive politics and activism. In contrast, her religious classification, as a Muslim, had never been a central part of her identity as she was growing up”.

Hussain’s early work, showcased in her solo exhibition Fragments/Multiples at Chemould Gallery in 1994, and at Talwar Gallery in 2010 and 2012 and at the India Pavilion at 58^th Venice Biennale, illustrates her innovative use of broken terra-cotta pots. The installations, including Dissected Projection (1993) and Conflux (1993), emphasise themes of fragmentation and abstraction. These works will be on view at The Barbican Center in London in Fall 2024.

In Dissected Projection, a black, bisected pot juts out from the wall, resembling a pregnant belly. Its reflection, distorted by the shards of an earthy red clay vase below, is enclosed in a transparent rectangular box filled with rubble, highlighting the theme of disintegration. Similarly, Conflux features a halved terra-cotta pot balanced on its side on a black tile, spilling gheru, a red ochre pigment, onto the floor, further exploring the motif of fragmentation and the interplay between object and space.

Dhar describes in detail in her article Hussain’s inaugural performance, ‘Living on the Margins’ (1995), in these words:

“As she slowly walked around the open courtyard of the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, with ghungroos, or ankle bells, on her feet, and a halved papaya in her outstretched hands, she seemed perfectly in her element, finally at ease with the form of her work. In contrast, many of those around her — some of whom later testified to never having witnessed anything like this in India before — watched with a mixture of rapture and bewilderment, uncertain as to what Hussain would do next.”

Apparently, she paced the room for half an hour, with her mouth wide open, yet no sound escaped, as if her voice had been forcibly stifled. Eventually, visibly drained, Hussain invited the small group around her to scatter red clay (gheru) and indigo powder across the floor. As they joined in, it was clear that not only had they embraced this act of participation, but they had also accepted the bold and unconventional nature of this work.

Hussain placed her own body at the heart of this piece, addressing both broader social issues, such as the increasing involvement of women in and victimization by violence, and more personal concerns. She had recently learned that one of her domestic staff members had ovarian cancer, while another had contracted AIDS. The severe condition of the latter, who could no longer close her mouth due to extensive ulceration from the infection, is believed to have directly influenced Hussain’s performance.

During this period, Hussain faced a profound personal crisis when she discovered several lumps in her body, a devastating revelation that marked the onset of breast cancer. At just 43, she was suddenly thrust into a battle that would test her resilience in ways she had never imagined. She was a very strong woman, but she was also vulnerable. She underwent a mastectomy in Mumbai, and as her treatment journey continued, she began a grueling routine of travelling back and forth to America for further care. In her vulnerability, she faced her illness with a courage that deeply marked her artistic and personal life.

Alongside her ongoing advocacy for laborer’s rights, environmental causes, and riot relief, Hussain emerged as one of the first artists to speak out against the persecution of modernist artist MF Husain, which began in 1996. After travelling with Ram Rahman to Ayodhya to document the aftermath of violence and the architectural remnants of the site, Hussain presented the exhibition Home/Nation at Chemould Gallery. This exhibition showcased her innovative approach, blending various elements and media into a semi-theatrical assemblage that created a partially immersive environment for viewers.

The texts below, about Hussain’s 1996 exhibition Home/Nation, and The Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal (1997) are derived from noted Indian art critic Geeta Kapur’s lecture: ‘Rummana’s Question: is it what you think?’ Sahmat, New Delhi, November 2009, Jyoti Dhar’s article of 2014, and Fiza Jha’s article of 2019, both of which have been cited before⁴.

Hussain explored the tension between the concepts of “home” and “nation,” revealing the deep contradictions within the promise of belonging. Her work aimed to challenge and deconstruct sectarian rhetoric, delving into its constructed narratives while resisting the pervasive influence of dominant ideologies. Until her passing in 1999, she grappled with a complex paradox: as an Indian citizen, she refused to accept the role of the ‘other,’ yet she pushed the boundaries of political belonging by embodying a destabilised identity within India’s ostensibly stable framework.

Her quest for identity was intertwined with her family’s aristocratic heritage. The Habibullahs, her paternal lineage, were part of the landed gentry from Barabanki in Awadh, an area known for its rich courtly culture and literary traditions until the late 19th century. Although Hussain visited her ancestral homes in Lucknow throughout her life, her engagement was not one of nostalgic longing but rather a nuanced exploration of her cultural roots. Her family, highly educated and progressive, had distanced themselves from aristocratic conventions. Like her mother, Hussain was passionate about girls’ education and found inspiration in the vibrant street culture of Lucknow. Her art drew from the city’s sophisticated decay, using it to interrogate the complexities of female subjectivity and the profound, often painful, realities it encompassed.

In her 1997 installation, The Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal, showcased in the “Telling Tales” group exhibition at the British Council in Bath, UK, Hussain masterfully engages with the life and legacy of the Begum. Named after her final resting place, she was a daring figure akin to Joan of Arc who valiantly resisted the British East India Company during the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58. The installation operates on multiple evocative levels. It is accompanied by an Urdu narration that recounts the tumultuous life of this overlooked heroine. It speaks of her estrangement from her husband, her defence of both Hindus and Muslims in Lucknow, and her eventual escape. This narration sets a poignant backdrop to the exhibit. The space is adorned with black-and-white archival images of palaces, swords, and paintings, seamlessly interwoven with fragments from Hussain’s performances, where she appears in black attire.

What might initially seem like calligraphic text on the walls is revealed to be a meticulously arranged collection of blackened household tools, creating a striking poetic effect. At one end of the room, dark drapes cascade from the ceiling, their overlapping triangles forming a dramatic, shadowy landscape. On the opposite side, sculptures of halved, whitened papayas, symbols of fertility and femininity, rest on a bed of bleached, uncooked rice at the centre. Their stark whiteness contrasting with the surrounding darkness. Black-and-white photographs of her limbs mirror the defiant gestures of the Begum, creating a living archive. Rusty iron tools form calligraphic inscriptions, evoking a votive prayer. By repeating these motifs, Hussain amplifies their symbolic resonance, imbuing the installation with a sense of both immediacy and fluidity. Despite the weight of its themes, the work exudes a quiet, poignant intensity rather than sinking into overt morbidity, leaving a lasting emotional impression on the viewer, who is left contemplating both the Begum’s and Hussain’s enduring legacies.

During this time, while regularly visiting New York for treatment, Hussain connected with art historian Moira Roth and artists Zarina Hashmi and Jamelie Hassan, engaging in discussions on performance, activism, and feminist theory. These conversations deeply influenced her work, fuelling her return to India with a renewed sense of purpose. Having already begun exploring what it meant to be a Muslim woman, she now boldly confronted and deconstructed sexual representation, exposing its constructed nature.

In her daring 1998 performance Is It What You Think? she shed inhibitions, confronting her identity as both an artist and a woman. Dressed in black lace underwear with a paranda, she partially revealed the scars from her mastectomy and prosthesis beneath a black veil. As images of armed young women flashed across her body, she slowly read from a cloth-covered book, almost chanting. Through this intense moment, she confronted external and internal battles, asking, “Where does she belong? Has she fought for her rights? Is she defined by others?” Blurring lines between gender, religion, revolution, and mortality, Hussain’s performance was both provocative and vulnerable, challenging societal norms and expectations.

In homage to this work, art critic Geeta Kapur wrote the following in Art India in 1999: “Perhaps I hang too much on Rummana Hussain’s frail body, but she risks herself in a way that makes me shudder and review the more sanguine forms of survival that we seek for ourselves.”

India is once again grappling with the resurgence of right-wing politics, making this a fitting moment to revisit Rummana Hussain’s profound exploration of identity politics and her unwavering belief in the power of art as a catalyst for social change. Her work, deeply personal yet universally resonant, speaks to the struggles of today as much as it did to the conflicts of her time.

Hussain’s battle with cancer ended on July 5, 1999, at the age of 47, in her Mumbai home. Her loss was immense, but her legacy endures. As one of India’s pioneering performance artists, she mastered the delicate art of weaving the personal into the political, turning her own experiences into a reflection of broader societal struggles. In her work, the personal was never just her own—it was a mirror held up to the world, forcing us to confront uncomfortable truths. Though she is gone, her impact remains alive, a reminder of the transformative power of art in turbulent times.

I am indebted to Talwar Gallery for all its support and in facilitating my request for the required images. All images are copyright of the Estate of Rummana Hussain; Courtesy Talwar Gallery, New York | New Delhi

References:

MAP Academy. The article ‘Rummana Hussain’ was first published in April 21, 2022  https://mapacademy.io/article/rummana-hussain/
‘Rummana Hussain, 47, Indian Conceptual Artist,’ by Holland Cotter, July 18, 1999, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/18/nyregion/rummana-hussain-47-indian-conceptual-artist.html
‘The heady art of Rummana Hussain’ by Sanjukta Sharma, 21 Mar 2015, Livemint https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/XEdaKQFzGwo1kjKVkwsOiO/The-heady-art-of-Rummana-Hussain.html