(Series of 17 individual works)
The series titled Pages from Hamid Manzil comprises seventeen small works on manjarpat
fabric. Created in 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, each work is rendered in a style typical
to the artist’s recent works including visual and conceptual motifs that set this particular series
comfortably in her larger oeuvre. The body of work is defined by a subdued colour palette and
includes motifs borrowed from the architecture of a home in small-town Aligarh, Hamid
Manzil. Many of the works are populated with text; in most cases, these texts are illegible, but
combined with all the other visual elements, function as a mise en scène for the stories of
Hamid Manzil that the artist narrates. In tracing out the elements of Hamid Manzil in her
artwork, the artist builds a memoir. The jharokhas, roshandaans, doorways, architraves, and
many other structural details of the building are reiterated here as elements that take the artist
and the viewer on a journey in time through a building that the artist once called home.
Hamid Manzil was the hostel where Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai stayed for three years during her
days as a student at the Aligarh Muslim University. The building itself, its architectural details,
and surrounding environs including a mango orchard all created an ambience within which
Arshi found her affinity towards Urdu poetry, philosophy, and romanticism - in Arshi’s words,
“seems as though Ismat aapa wrote Lihaaf in Hamid Manzil”.
1 jharokha - a window projecting from the wall face of a building, in an upper story, overlooking a street, market, court or any other open
space.
2 roshandaan - a ventilator above doors in old buildings, created to let in air and natural light.
3 Lihaaf - Lihaaf is a 1942 Urdu short story written by Ismat Chughtai. Published in the Urdu literary journal Adab-i-Latif, it led to much
controversy, uproar and an obscenity trial, where Ismat had to defend herself in the Lahore Court.