When Milton wrote Paradise Lost some 300 years ago, he contrasted divine de­v­otion with the earthly and humanistic elements of civil and socio-political war. At his recently opened show at AAN Gandhara Art Space, Adeel uz Zafar recontex­tualises the epic as a visual timeline, connoting the credence, countries, conquests and casualties that have occurred to shape Pakistan’s social, cultural, religious and political identities, as they stand today.

Seven is a mystical number — Chant and Lament, Inferno, Scripture, Standard, Idol, Glitch, Paradise — the seven stages of ascension or purgatory, lessons and penance; like the chapters of a book, Zafar has transformed the gallery space into seven sections, seven installations and bequeathed each with a corresponding title. With the spaces unfolding and progressing into each other, Zafar’s Paradise Lost takes the viewer on a guided journey that culminates at his ‘Paradise’, much like Beatrice, the allegory for theology, guiding Dante on his journey through Heaven. But in this iteration, is mankind’s reprieve definitive? Zafar’s layered work and portrayal keep us questioning.

Lit from above, something gilded and imagery familiar. With shadows of divine symmetry falling on blank walls, a sound installation suggests duplicitous laws and moral superiority with unsettling scraping. Using sound instead of speech as a medium here, elsewhere in the gallery, a book contains images instead of text. While the former bases its intricacies on the abrasive noises made during the creation of Zafar’s signature engraved drawings on vinyl, the latter reveals tattered pages contained within a covering of symbolic green and gold. Something ruptured some dense, a few empty, mostly layered, erased and then overwritten, the pages insinuate acts of archiving, manipulating or educating, and how these can be inherently violent when favouring the promotion of a people, over the erasure of another. Just adjacent, a series of monochromatic but no less intemperate explosions are confident against a background of red.

The installations that comprise each section are accompanied by dates — incredibly specific in their numerical form but protected by the vagaries afforded to mediums outside of language. Zafar’s presentation thus takes on a collaborative nature where the usually passive viewer is left to decide whether to treat the date with apathy or impulse, choosing whether to further investigate the date provided or not — incidentally, also making the viewer complicit in the narrative that is created. Together with the artwork, the dates serve as amorphous disembodiments of aesthetic experience that simultaneously manage to erase and reiterate the footprint of history.

Adeel uz Zafar transforms the gallery space into seven sections and bequeaths each with a corresponding title

Three black standards stand tall against a wall. A stylised inscription on a flag is a familiar refrain for anyone watching the news. But while the optics of the recognisable flags are designed to galvanise those who do not know better, Zafar’s standards can only be understood at a particular height, distance from, and educated perspective toward the ‘Standard’. Arranged at varied and declining heights, the installation reads as sub-headings or a family tree, where the actions of one lead to the creation of another.

As one moves deeper through Paradise Lost, it becomes clear that Zafar’s ambit of research was not restricted to the politics of a particular geography, just as the effects of politics rarely stay contained within their area of perpetration. Be they an emperor or a politician, minority, student, intellectual, soldier or child, the categorising of someone as an ‘Idol’ is cemented in the power dynamics of the present.

At the end of a vast and dark space, a mere five cm in height, bathed in a halo of golden light ‘Paradise’ may be the smallest but most powerful piece in a show already poignant. Hopeful, distressing and questioning all at the same time, so small that it requires a magnifying glass to realise its physicality, the piece considers contemporary notions of paradise and calls into question the many aspirations that are encouraged in order to reach this metaphorical destination. Though framed and ornate, Zafar’s ‘Paradise’ is real; but what about the traditional renditions?

For a body of work that is so heavily seeped in histories and literature — sacred, classical, modern and other — one is led to consider: is its framing an act of brevity or rather a result of the same motivators that have dictated what, how, and by whom, we, as a nation, are allowed to disseminate and critique information? If Zafar’s art could talk, it would probably advise that we contemplate, deliberate and cogitate.

“Paradise Lost” is being exhibited at AAN Gandhara Art Space in Karachi from October 27, 2020 to December 8, 2020

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 15th, 2020