Sacred assemblage: The pottery of Sheherezade Alam

KARACHI:

Koel Gallery’s cream-coloured, light-filled interiors carry an enchantment. One is reminded of an early pleasure, that of pinwheels spinning against an open wind. Such is the effect of a cursory glance. Or more elemental, it is as though a dancer turns, and turns, fired upon an invisible centre. Her motion remains present long after a viewing of potter Sheherezade Alam’s “207 Vessels”. The turning is hard to contain. A sense of exquisite proliferation marks the show.

Presently based in Lahore, Sheherezade shares two decades of her craft, a selection of clay vessels dated between 1985 and 2011. Each piece, detailed like no other, carries its own biography. In terms of clay source, methods of firing and glazes, as well as period and location of creation, the show reads as an expansive personal journey. Moreover, it indicates the imaginative largesse involved in cohering and continuing, an ancient earthenware tradition specific to the Indian subcontinent.

Gravitation generates essential form. And at the heart of the matter is the potter’s wheel. Author Sara Suleri Goodyear refers to this in her brief, erudite catalogue introduction. “In pre-Islamic and the Islamic eras, the Indian potter served as a cultural icon, as the one maker who could give physical shape to the unutterable symmetries of mysticism.” And she adds, “Sheherezade Alam revives [the wheel] in order to extend the significance of earth in the aesthetic of the East.”

Research into the traditions of Mehergarh, Harappa and Taxila undergird her sensibility. She further suggests that a study in Multani turquoise and cobalt glazes are fundamental to conventional pottery of the region, which otherwise cultivates work with exposed clay. Both technologies are visible in the show. But ‘tradition’ is not limited to these instances alone. Sheherezade has absorbed influences from as far and wide as Turkey, Greece, Italy, Iran, Scandinavia and Japan. Work with master potters based in England, a residency in Glasgow, teaching in Ankara, studio practice in New Haven and in Toronto, for many years her home base, have each enriched her return to the wheel.

At the current exhibition, we are privy to pots from a range of work periods. For instance, smaller pieces from her early days of experimentation are presented alongside raku vessels (1997), which in turn complement a period of play with unglazed black and white clay (Toronto, 2006). The show is by no means a retrospective, nor is it ordered as such. The mood is more informal. It suggests an occasion for self-reflection and for communally sharing a vernacular craft process. Its reach is nevertheless sublime.

In an essay entitled “Aesthetics and Context”, anthropologist Juergen Wasim Fremgen coins the terms “sacred assemblage” and “votive installations”, in order to describe the material and dialogic aspects of indigenous shrine culture. Here, whether we are looking at elegant grid displays of vessels or at a stunning series of red-glazed pots (Offering Bowls, 2004), Fremgen’s taxonomy may be aptly applied to Sheherezade’s oeuvre.

In speaking of the sacred, we may also move into the realm of the feminine. The potter speaks of a vital connection to the earth, to its fertile, yielding quality and to its strength as a medium. A sense of rhythmic openness and abundance marks each of her works, as though intrinsic to the hands that mould. Therein ritual for Sheherezade is key. It almost appears as a structuring principle. Through her aesthetic, and on the occasion of this exhibition, we may perhaps re-consider located notions of the sacred. For this has, as per Ms Suleri, a rich and irresistibly porous tradition in the land that is the greater subcontinent.

The show continues till April 2 at Koel Gallery, Karachi.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2012.