To search for poetic nuances in contemporary narratives of human conflict, politics of land, and geographical divide, one may look towards the renditions of nature in art practices from the past and present. Countries are marked through the contour lines of maps. Eventually, once boundary lines have been drawn, the earth is fragmented. The animals, flowers, and landmarks become witnesses to that time and place. The winds and rain of the earth resonate with the memory of that land. Throughout it all, nature remains the sole constant that provides us with the one true testimonial of what is to be remembered.

“Who would compile the record of those hearts who left no name or address and distributed

Their body along with what it wore

The leaves rejoined the earth after erecting streams with their breaths.”

Najm Hosain Syed

Risham Syed narrates her father’s poetry in a soulful song in the background of her solo show, Chait Vasraand (What the Rain Remembers). A multidisciplinary artist, Syed, in her own words, invites viewers to “confront the entangled threads of our existence, where past and present, and local and global intersect. This convergence reveals the fissures in our shared humanity and the resilience that bridges them.”

Syed’s art practice in recent years has revolved around the use of vintage Chinese jacquard silk panels. Given to her by her late mother, the artist uses the panels as the base for her creative storytelling. She titles these works Texts and Contexts: The Olive Tree Series. Syed tackles several socio-political discourses through her silk panels. She attempts to subvert Orientalist representations of the non-West by juxtaposing motifs of colonial-era Company style paintings atop carefully selected maps of the Middle East. Her overt acknowledgment of the current crisis in Gaza connects the brutal history of bloodshed and fragmentation of humanity as a consequence of colonialism, persisting prominently in contemporary times.

The medium of the silk panel as a canvas seemingly references multiple layers¾ familial nostalgia, the concept of home, and cross-cultural boundaries, among others. Unlike her previous displays, all of the silk panels (with the exception of one) are displayed on the floor instead of the walls. With colours of green and red as the background, each panel depicts contours of premodern era styled maps. She superimposes embroidered contours of the changing map of Palestine¾  from as far back as the Roman Empire to the current 21st century – as it became more and more fragmented over time, most prominently during the Israeli occupation. Printed and drawn illustrations of animals, seemingly real, extinct, and mythical, are interspersed with idyllic images of picturesque European settings, such as a French cityscape or an Italian countryside, which have been sampled from commercial prints and tapestries. Along with the fauna also appear to be motifs of flora, that is, flowers of different types. All of these carefully selected symbols allude to a multifaceted historical and cultural narrative of colonial conquest. Much like the Company paintings from the colonial British Empire in India, catalogued illustrations of the natural landscape act as an ethnographic record of the colonized regions.

In her book The Politics of Vision, Linda Nochlin recounts these “picturesque” renditions of the Orient having little to do with ethnography, and more so to satisfy the insatiable fetish of the colonizer regarding the “mysterious” dark lands of the Orient. She states: “the very notion of the picturesque in its nineteenth-century manifestations is premised on the fact of destruction.” ¹ Centuries later, the same fetish manifests in different ways, namely, to witness devastation in the Middle East.

Those who have actively followed social media content related to the bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli Occupation Forces since October 2023 can instantly recognize some of the noticeable motifs used in Syed’s silk panels. Blood-stained sneakers and abandoned ballet flats amongst the rubble of Gaza’s infrastructure became symbolic of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis unfolding throughout the past year, particularly when content related to the bloodshed was routinely censored by social media algorithms online. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives have been eradicated in Israel’s quest to seemingly gain control of the region in just the past year alone, leading to one of the most calamitous global crises in modern history.

The faceless representation of shoes bore witness to the killing of young Palestinian children who once wore them, also hinting at the eradication of Palestinian presence, not only in the population but also in online platforms. Modern brands like ‘Nike’ and ‘Adidas’ can be seen replacing the flora and fauna of the Company era motifs. Syed creates an unsettling rendition of the colonial “picturesque”, producing an ethnographic record of her own that narrates the story of conquest in the context of 21st century Palestine.

As the title of the series implies, the image of the Olive tree can be seen in nearly all of the panels. We see the tree itself in different transitions – either as a plant, fully grown, or chopped down. Throughout history, the Olive tree has come to symbolize different facets of the Israel-Palestine conflict. ² From representing historical, cultural, and economic significance for the Palestinian people, to becoming a symbol for Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, the Olive tree stands for not just the representation of the indigeneity of the land, but also the uprooting of an entire population amidst political conquest and control.

Pakistani artists find themselves closely aligning with Palestinian resistance particularly because of the Indian subcontinent’s own torrid history with colonization, rebellion against western powers, and resistance to occupation – the consequence for which had been the gruesome fragmentation of the land and division of the population. Syed, therefore, recognizes the patterns between her own local history and current global politics through her oeuvre, reminding viewers that these fragments “bear witness to the human capacity for endurance”.

Syed’s father completes his poem with the following words:

“Millions of saawan (monsoon) have rained

Every droplet needs to be counted

But where are the eyes who would pick what ants have dropped on the soil.”

Although the lines of the maps have been fragmented with time by political powers adamant on erasing indigenous Palestinian voices, Syed reminds us that the witnesses of the land will remain– in the uprooted Olive trees, the bloodied shoes of the slain Palestinians, and perhaps, even the rain may remember.

Risham Syed’s solo show, ‘Chait Vasraand (What the Rain Remembers)’ was on display at Canvas Gallery from 19th – 28th November 2024.

All images, courtesy @Canvas Gallery.

Title Image: Texts and Contexts: The Olive Tree Series III (71 x 52 inches), IV (72 x 52 inches), V (72 x 52 inches), VI (75 x 52 inches), VII (74 x 52 inches), and VIII (74 x 52 inches), Risham Syed, Mixed media on vintage Chinese jacquard silk panel, 2024.