Pritha Mahanti
Ali Akbar’s Alluvial Plain – 1 is deceptively remarkable, or perhaps remarkably deceptive. Before he explains it to me, I think I can figure out that there’s something that betrays the stillness of the frame. Although the figures seem to be caught in a moment of rest, the dynamism of their appearance is unmistakable. They challenge vision, not in terms of illusion, but in the way they hold disparities with ease. We think we might know who they are or where they are from, but that tells us nothing about them. We need fiction and we almost start building one. The frame slowly draws us in. Far in the background, we cannot discern the waves, but it is possible that these are not quiet waters. Some of us might even hear the rumbling of the wind as it sweeps over the bare land. At this point, we know we are experiencing history as a whisper, and not the loud cacophony we are used to. At this point, what we see before us, is art as the repository of the omissions of history.
Ali tells me that the frame is about the arrival of a king—not the one standing, but the one squatting. I am surprised when he tells me this is how he imagines the figure of Alaudin Khilji as he set foot in Gujarat, a state where Ali is currently based. No glorious display, no grand entourage. Just a pair of horses and an overdressed companion, quite possibly Malik Kafur, the king’s dear enslaved general who was also known to be a trans person. Such a whimsical re-orientation of power only makes sense when we realise that as a chronicle of the past, the veneration of history seems ironic given that it’s not absolute. Yet its essentiality is foregrounded by the fact that it is after all a constantly evolving dialogue that sets the context of being. Infamous in the collective memory, especially in Gujarat, Khilji remains much maligned as the communal bigot. Yet a deeper historical scrutiny would reveal that in the tumultuous politics of empires, definitive definitions are erroneous. More than one source, between the 14th to the 17th century, tells us that Madhava, minister to the then Vaghela King Karnadeva of Gujarat, in an act of revenge, had urged Khilji to help him wage a war against the king. One way to look at history then would be a collage of sorts. An assortment of versions, variations and viewpoints. Ali masterfully presents this idea in the way he crafts his frame.
A closer look at the figures would reveal that their wholeness is but an incredible patchwork, a homage to the eclectic cultural heritages washed ashore through oceanic interactions. As far back as the 10th century, cities on India’s western coast had already become booming commercial centres with the influx of Arab traders. From Cambay in Gujarat to Muziris in Kerala, where Ali hails from, the waves of the Indian Ocean brought a new world and people, who became an inseparable part of the subcontinent. The overemphasis on land-based history that equates Arabs with invaders is thus both tragic and hilarious. And Ali challenges this with a chuckle. He shifts the figure of Khilji to the coast, thereby quite impressively making him a vessel to carry the imprints of those who came before him. As for his companion general, the elaborate robes almost foreshadow how enslaved labourers and warriors rose to ranks of social prominence and added to the rich cultural milieu. Finally, in adjusting the scale to balance mainland and maritime memories, Ali, almost surreptitiously, blends the seascape and landscape in the background.
The need to re-imagine one’s past beyond what the archives dictate or deduct, seems to be the artist’s philosophical preoccupation. Ali transforms his coastal hometown into a temporal palimpsest by foregrounding many pasts and peoples against its backdrop. In the detail from Screw Pine in the Salty Wind, we see a figure (possibly a warrior), atop an armoured horse.
He explains the recurrence of the horse as representing another narrative arc in the retelling of the past. The chicly decorated horses in Alluvial Plain – 1 are starkly different from the iron-clad one we see here. From business to warfare, the evolution of the uses of imported Arab horses charts the social, economic and political assimilation of cultures and communities into the fabric of a new land. In the place of what could have been a battlefield, we see the master and the animal amidst a virgin land that bears scars of encroachment (as the felled trees indicate). The digital deceit becomes necessary in a landscape trampled over by the unruly forces of communal politics, despite the rich and diverse local histories, traditions, folklores and myths.
Moving from prints to paintings, Ali’s reconfiguration of a seemingly Islamic architecture makes us step back for a while. Proximity creates confusion, so we seek the bigger picture. I tell Ali that this could be the Jama Masjid, when I know it’s not. He says it may not be a mosque compound at all. The ubiquitous presence of Indo-Islamic architecture across the Indian subcontinent encompasses both the secular and the religious. In Ali’s painting, the façade appears to be suspended without context and the faceless crowd could be timelessly drifting across centuries. Simultaneously somewhere and nowhere, the nonchalant depiction of a public square, with uniquely Islamic features, takes on a reverential tone. In a war of iconographies, collective memory is always the site of contention. To prevent it from being held hostage, one needs imagination, like how Ali painstakingly scars the surface of the painting to give it an archival character. It is already a record of what could have been. His works could be considered under the practice of critical fabulations, an artistic practice that employs storytelling to awaken alternative histories.
It is through these alternative histories that iconographies set in stone can be freed. Ali does it almost literally in Relics – 2, with the sculpture of the Lion of Babylon that shows a Mesopotamian lion overpowering a supine human figure. Across civilizations and cultures throughout history, the lion has been a symbol of prowess, strength and authority. Needless to say, those in power have always tried to emulate the posture of the lion. Yet time has been the only true conqueror. From being the symbol of legendary Babylon in all its glory, to being the crumbling version of itself with American soldiers posing near it during the Iraq War, the mighty sculpture has had its fall. Yet, as an idea, it surpasses its own being. Through prints, paintings and sculptures, Ali creates a time loop within which the Lion of Babylon is seen in its creation, re-construction and demise. He even comes up with his own version of the lion that is evidently more ferocious. Perhaps its force lies in its creative power, in the interventions into grand narratives that it is capable of. Perhaps Ali’s shadow engulfing the lion in the frame to the left (below) is more than chance.
Ali Akbar P N is a Vadodara-based contemporary artist. His recent works are currently being showcased under ‘The Salts of Many Seas‘, as part of Three Solos hosted by Emami Art, Kolkata.
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