Urdu Worlds: beyond language, toward heterotopia

Dear Hammad Nasar,

One is quite familiar with the expressions: Urdu speaking, Urdudaan and Urdu medium, literal and colloquial. Urdu-speaking people are not just the ones who natively speak Urdu or the descendants of the immigrants from the Indian partition, tough and edgy. They are also the tradition bearers: the farshi ghararas, the paandaans, the mushairas, etc, etc. Urdudaan is the master or the custodian of the language. Urdu-medium, a highly politicised term, refers to the medium of instruction in schools, but largely signifies a social class that allows the pseudo-intellectuals to look down upon their peers. But what is this 'Urdu Worlds'?

For an answer, one needs to experience your recently curated show at Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, featuring Zarina Hashmi and Ali Kazim. As both artists engage with the Urdu language and literature, can one think in terms of Urdu Art? The dictionary definition of such an expression would be "any art that uses the Urdu alphabet as a visual". In a peculiar art historical context, it can be art from South Asia as the main Urdu-speaking region. I can imagine some enthusiasts taking on the term as "Art created by the native Urdu speakers or the custodians of the Urdu language, for the Urdu mediums or those who feel empathetic towards them". Some "haters" might call it tactics to sell art by portraying South Asian artists as marginalised, oppressed and in need of immediate support, else creativity will die out soon in that part of the world.

Conceptually, it may represent a mechanism to address the identity issues of the Global South, or it can be appreciated as an opportunity provided to brown people to decolonise their art practices. In this context, Urdu Worlds can be a space generously allocated by the "supreme whites" in an effort to decolonise the creative spaces.

Theoretically, Urdu Art may enable others to engage with the Urdu language. We all understand that words or letters, when written down, are simple visual abstractions representing ideas. What is the relationship between ideas and words? Being from the world of art, I am sure you would also recommend Micheal Foucault's 'This is not a pipe' to explain the circumstantial, conventional, historical nature of the bond between the signifier and the signified, which I would like to replicate for this situation:

"There are worlds. Or rather, must we not say, several versions of the same world? Or yet a world and the artwork of that world, or yet again several artworks, each representing a different world? Or several artworks, one representing a world and the other not, or several more worlds yet, of which neither the one nor the other are or represents a world? Or yet again, an artwork representing not a world at all but letters, words and proverbs, which represent a world so well that I must ask myself: To what does the Urdu World relate to? A word at once opposed and complementary."

I guess the desi viewers would expect 'Urdu Worlds' to be a utopia, seeking consolation. Yet utopia lacks an actual space. It possesses an imaginary, serene dimension where it can flourish. It constructs magnificent metropolises, notwithstanding that the journey there is nevertheless impossible. Yours is a heterotopia in contrast; real but unsettling as it accepts and challenges the communication system at the same time, encourages and prevents, simultaneously, the ability to identify specific forms, sounds and concepts, fragments and entangles conventions and undermines the structural frameworks that may cut or connect words, objects and certain axioms.

The relationship of languages to the world is one of analogy rather than signification; or rather, their value as signs and their duplicating function are superimposed. Such word games are ubiquitous. In your Urdu Worlds, two thinkers, Hashmi and Kazim, have the opportunity to communicate through the medium of art. The effacement of bonds and the celebration of difference are certainly near the center of their practice and is the ultimate reality of our times.

With profound respect to legendary Zarina apa and dear Ali.

Bano

March 2026