Seher Shah: Of Dust and Woven Air

Shah draws inspiration from Agha Shahid Ali’s poem, The Dacca Gauzes – “Those transparent Dacca gauzes / known as woven air, running / water, evening dew: / a dead art now, dead over / a hundred years”. Says the artist: “There is an unknown quality that materials hold by weaving histories and cultures speaking to each other. I thought of this material resonance when I first read Agha Shahid Ali’s poem, … His words evoked memories of my maternal family and the cities they inhabited; a cartography between the real and imaginedOf Dust and Woven Air are studies into absence and memory through drawing, printmaking and poetry. A poetry of loss and erasure revealed in line, form and materiality on paper. Working with dust and its accumulations, I draw on Bengal muslin (gauze), the ethereal cloth of Agha Shahid Ali’s poem …” To 5 April.