BAGH-E ZANANA: WOMEN'S GARDEN: curated by Emiliano Vades

Exile lingers as a scent in Ahmadzai’s new suite of works eponymously titled after Kabul’s public garden designated exclusively for women. Bagh-e-Zenana’s history is one of repair and return, as the once opulent garden of queens witnessed political onslaughts and damage, until it was revived in early 2000s by Nilab Sadat as a space of refuge and camaraderie for the women of Kabul. Sadat reportedly had over 800 trees planted in the bagh. Among the things Ahmadzai salvaged in her escape from the city in 2021 are sketches made under the awn of those very trees, marking the hours of pleasure, freedom and friendship experienced in the garden. The sketches hold lines that are sparse and swift, drenched with the immediacy of co-presence, the artist is witness to scenes in unfolding in her sight. Years later, these scenes pass through the prism of exile and memory, and the spry lines transform into motifs laboriously plotted with graphite and acrylic and layered with paper pulp on the traditional Manjarpat fabric that Ahmadzai favours. 

Trees appear as a salient motif, a topographic spectre of the bagh, in nearly all the works. Along with foliage and architectural iconography such as ornamented darwazas and domes, Ahmadzai is attentive to the properties of light in a garden, which appears as both a poetic refrain and through the generous use of gold dust. In the twin loss of a home and a city, Ahmadzai’s turn to trees as a symbol signals a sense of rootedness that transcends the limits of the present, and echoes the concept of sumud or steadfastness.  The portrayal of the immanence of light, its exorbitance towards all that falls in its path, from stone to the filigreed dance of leaves, to the illumination of women and young girls piercing the air with laughter and songs, is less an elegy but a promise that echoes the persistence of birds, sunlight, trees against the agony of history. A promise to remain, and to remain unbound.

Arushi Vats