Master of Fine Arts Thesis
MASHQ (a practice)
Javaria Ahmad
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, School of Art and Design
Division of Ceramic Art New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University
Alfred, New York 2023
Javaria Ahmad, MFA
Thesis Advisors:
Lindsay Montgomery, Johnathan Hopp, Linda Sikora, Adero Willard, Stephanie Hanes, Walter McConnell
Table of Content
1: Abstract 3
2: Key Words 3
3: Introduction 4
4: Everyday 5
5: Everyday Domesticity and Gender 6
6: Mashq (a practice) 8
7: The Weight of Wait 12
8: Artist 1: Humaira Abid 14
9: Artist 2: Tayeba Begum Lipi 16
10: Conclusion 18
11: Bibliography 19
12: Technical Statement 20
MASHQ (a practice)
Abstract:
The everyday labor of homemaking comes with its own joy and pain. This research paper will discuss the everyday life of a South Asian woman (especially in Pakistan) in relation to mundane domestic activities that keep these women going. It will shed light on the widely practiced stereotypical beliefs about women’s lives. Pakistan is a religiously conservative country where gender hierarchy prevails. In traditional households, women are still taught and expected to be submissive and obedient. Such restrictions are often suffocating yet inescapable.
Such ideas will be discussed with reference to my own art practice as well as the works of other artists. It is interesting to know that many women around the globe share similar kinds of lives and therefore respond to them through corresponding ideas in art.
Key Words:
Women, Domesticity, Homemaking, Labor, Everyday, Stereotypes, Memories, Time and Age, Bilingual Experience, Topophilia, Miniature, Story Telling, Cultural Clothing, Textile, Trompe l'oeil, Identity, Repetition, Multiplicity.
Introduction:
The culturally specific gender discourse around women’s everyday practices and domestic commodities has influenced my life and my work. As a woman who grew up within Pakistan’s belief system and is currently living in America, I have been through a substantial number of bilingual and multicultural experiences. Having lived in two contrasting cultures is an ethnographic research project for me. This research gives me an opportunity to observe significant commonalities and differences within both cultures, such as the usage of textiles within the home or gender roles, etc. Through examining both cultures simultaneously from the inside and outside, I’m able to get a strong sense of place and cultural identity. It also gives me a chance to study cultural norms in their regional contexts in both Pakistan and America. I live with a long list of societal restrictions around my ways of behaving as an over-aged, unmarried, homeless homemaker in Pakistan. In America, I am a single, independent woman artist. The struggle for survival in both cultures has touched my art practice in its own unique way. There are various cultural ideologies that are extremely different yet similar at times in both cultures. For example, a single woman who is alone and viewed as a vulnerable entity receives courteous treatment in public but can also be treated in a judgmental and manipulative way. I am still struggling to understand these cultural norms.
Everyday:
The idea of "everyday" seems obvious but is loaded with socio-cultural responsibilities depending on one’s role in a culture. "Everyday" tasks constitute the practices and rituals, such as ironing clothes or folding laundry, etc., that many of us, especially women, do all the time. We encounter these activities so regularly that their presence becomes invisible to us. According to the philosopher Yuriko Saito, everyday experiences are regarded as ordinary, commonplace, and routine. In Pakistan, the lives of women are defined by the everyday tasks associated with their position within the family structure. As a woman artist in this cultural context, I was expected to compromise my life as an independent artist and focus on my role as a homemaker. Since coming to the United States, my every day and cultural identities have been defined by engaging in the practice of art-making without the added expectation of being a homemaker as well.
A person’s identity and worth are shaped by their occupation and lifestyle. My occupation and lifestyle mean very different things whether I’m in Pakistan or America. I am an independent woman and artist, regardless of which culture I reside in. No matter where I live, I want to be an independent woman artist above all else.
Everyday practices vary from culture to culture as per the need for survival in terms of belief system, geography, and socioeconomic conditions of the place. Saito favors the same idea by saying that "diverse living environments determine what is included in their everyday lives."
Broadly, "repetition" is one of the consistent elements in "everyday" and "practices." It allows diverse occupations and lifestyles to expand their worth and identity. There is a significant relationship between the mundane alteration of days and nights, the lunar cycle, and everyday domestic activities, and these phenomena are constant in a repetitive pattern.
This notion of the "non-negotiable everyday" has become the inspiration for my current work.
Everyday Domesticity and Gender:
Life for a woman is stern in Pakistan, and so is the idea of domesticity. In most parts of the country, deeply embedded, hierarchical gender roles prevail. Young girls are brought up with the idea of dutiful domesticity in their minds. They are given household objects to play with. This practice is not restricted to Pakistan; when we look back into the history of toys, teaching domesticity to young girls is nourished globally.
In conservative households in Pakistan, gender roles are strictly maintained. Children are taught that girls don’t play outside and boys don’t play house. Children are conditioned to operate within the spatial realm of their gender. In this situation, boys and men are given freedom and authority, whereas girls and women are bound to activities within the home.
Even with equal educational opportunities for both, domestic servitude and motherhood are expected of women.
Growing up in a middle-class household in Pakistan, I observed my mother, aunts, and grandmothers living under similar ideas of life as the "cult of domesticity." The "cult of domesticity" or "true womanhood" was a mid-19th-century American movement among middle-class women who saw their behavior regulated by a social system that was designed to limit their sphere of influence. Pakistan is a far less developed country as compared to America and is decades behind the United States in terms of available resources, technological advancement, infrastructure, and basic life facilities such as education, health, and so on. In this situation, many people invest in the education of their sons while keeping their daughters away from all such facilities. The traditional life of a woman in Pakistan is nearly the same as what is prescribed in the four cardinal virtues of the "cult of domesticity," which are piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.
Being an artist of an inquisitive nature, observing these culturally and socially constructed ideas is an integral part of my work. Through my art, I revolt against gender injustice but still respect the warmth and richness of Pakistani culture as my identity. Or, in other words, I gave up having an active verbal dialogue in the hope of change and passively started
looking for poetry in the lives of these women and in my own life simultaneously.
Therefore, I named this very idea of selective acceptance "subversive submission."
Mashq (a practice):
Figure 1. Ahmad-Javaria, Mashq, 6 x 6 feet, Slipcast Porcelain Fired in Wood, Salt and Soda Atmosphere, 2023
Mashq is an installation comprised of approximately two thousand miniature slip-cast porcelain clothing irons. I made this work by observing the differences and similarities in everyday life in both Pakistan and America. Ironing clothes is one of these mundane everyday chores that has really caught my attention and influenced my work. A group of irons of different vintage models and sizes refers to the time and age of a tradition that has been practiced through generations. These miniature irons are fired in atmospheric kilns and therefore go through a specific climatic process to mature. As long as these pieces fire inside the wood, salt, or soda kiln, the air inside the kiln continues penetrating into the skins of these pieces and leaving permanent marks. Therefore, not a single iron has an identical texture in terms of how it absorbs the effects of the outside world. For me, these irons are a metaphor of silence, a blindly or forcefully followed custom, or at times, a South Asian or Pakistani woman herself who is bound to follow a set of certain traditions.
I always find myself naturally drawn toward everyday household objects used by women.
For me, these objects or machines are more than consumer units; they are, rather,
beautifully crafted sculptures in themselves, especially manually operated vintage or retro models with visibly extended handles or levers. Growing up in a middle-class household in the 1980s and playing around with such machines embedded them in my memory.
Through my art making, I got a chance to revisit my childhood memories and bring forth some of their content. As mentioned by Bachelard in the Poetics of Reverie, "So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us." In my case, I believe it’s the call of my childhood that is still mesmerizing and allows me to find a deeper context in the household machines mostly used by women in Pakistani culture.
Nasrin Himada is a Palestinian writer and curator. She talks about the poetics of object- making while referring to Khaim, which is a documentary by a Lebanese artist. The film focuses on the material process of making objects by six former prisoners released from Khaim, the infamous detention camp in Lebanon.
Himada commented that watching this film made her question "how images tell stories, how they communicate information," and "how is the making of objects a poetics, a poetics that forms life?" Later, she explains that the "poetry enacts and tells the open secrets."
Through the visual language of my work, I believe that I am also looking for the same context that Himada questioned. Therefore, I see my work as visual storytelling about a group of women belonging to a specific region of the world.
The everyday ritual of ironing clothes in Pakistan is loaded with cultural narratives of traditions and customs that are often gender-based. Due to the extreme hot weather in Pakistan, people mainly wear breathable cotton that wrinkles very easily, and in order to look presentable, almost everyone wears properly ironed clothes. In middle-class households, ironing everyone’s clothes is mostly done by the women of the house and by the servants in the houses of the rich.
In the Urdu language, an iron is called ‘istari," and in the Hindi language, the word "satree"
is used to refer to a "woman." Phonetically, both of the words are almost the same. For me, working with the everyday domestic object known as istari, which I am using to talk about
women, is phonetically similar to a "woman" themselves across the border,1 and its English translation adds more layers to it because iron is a strong metal.
Mashq speaks about the everyday domestic labor of women in Pakistan, a labor that is constant yet overlooked or taken for granted. For me, the whole process of making molds, casting, cleaning, and firing the multiple numbers of pieces, as well as their transportation and display, is a ritualistic recreation of the same stereotypical labor practiced for homemaking. The repetitive process of producing multiple tiny sculptural irons is not merely a production process; the idea of repetition is always there in nature’s cycle of day and night or the seasons. Artist and philosopher Adrian Piper supports the same idea by explaining her work process. "I repeat it, re-experience it, examine and analyze it, and infuse myself with it until I have wrung it to personal meaning and significance.’
In Urdu, the word "mashq" means "training through practice." It means practicing something on a repetitive basis so that we eventually surpass it. As a Muslim woman with the religious practice of praying five times a day, the idea of repetition, or mashq, is an integral part of my daily routine. This practice is further connected with the rosary, or tasbeeh, commonly known as the chanting beads. The idea of chanting beads is practiced in many other religions as well. Beads strung for chanting are basically a tool to keep the count on record. Muslims chant specific verses or words from the Holy Quran to seek the Almighty’s blessings. Having such a connection to my work is natural, yet it is adding more layers to it as I am realizing how repetition is a universal phenomenon that goes unnoticed most of the time.
The ideas of repetition and memory are related to each other. In order to keep a memory alive, we visit it back and forth. Every time, this process of re-visitation introduces us to a few forgotten details and therefore adds new layers to our observation. Therefore, repetition as revisitation is reverence for an experience. The repetition of domestic tasks in the home by women connects them to this traditional role and their mothers and
1 Pakistan and India are neighboring countries that share the same border and culture.
grandmothers, who did the same tasks before them. This helps to reinforce the traditional roles of women in the domestic space across generations.
Mashq also addresses both objective and subjective ideas of multiplicity, repetition, memory, and culture. The tiny scale of iron, seemingly related to childhood, deals differently with human psychology. The diminutive scale of an individual piece immediately refers to a doll’s house or childhood’s pretend play. On a closer look, the seriousness of the object and the color palette look bizarre, which is quite the opposite of what a child prefers: bright colors. The scale of each individual iron in the installation forces the viewer to focus on the image rather than just have a passive experience.
The quantity of irons relates to the previously mentioned idea of mashq, or repetition, both literally and conceptually. Producing and displaying an installation made of numerous tiny pieces is such labor-intensive work that it requires extreme vigilance and clarity of purpose as well. The archival appearance of this work refers to the age of our beliefs, our traditions, and the age of our everyday routines.
I believe that the mother tongue is a home for all of us. Communicating in your mother tongue adds warmth, expression, and depth to a conversation. A change of language often comes with a new culture and mindset. So, adding text to my work in Urdu language or Urdu script adds a personal and regional context to my work, which makes it more authentic.
The Weight of Wait:
Figure 2. Ahmad-Javaria, The Weight of Wait, 40 x 18 x 11”, Stained, Under-glazed and Glazed Porcelain, 2023
Our lives are informed by the objects and activities that surround us. They reveal a lot about our emotions, aspirations, culture, and traditions. The idea of a shawl or a scarf is significant in the Islamic culture of Pakistan. A shawl is commonly known as a dupatta in Urdu. The word "chuniri" is also used for the same. As my work is deeply informed by the idea of everyday commodities used by women, the dupatta is one of them. In its traditional setting in Pakistan, the dupatta is a mandatory part of a woman’s everyday clothing known as shalwar kameez. The shalwar stands for a trouser or pants, and the kameez is a shirt. In the religious context, it is mandatory for women to cover themselves with dupattas while doing the five daily prayers. As an everyday object, the dupatta carries substantial cultural weight. It has multiple meanings, especially in middle-class or religiously conservative
households. There are many ways to wear a dupatta. In conservative circles, the nobility of a woman is often judged by the way she wears a dupatta, a veil, or any fabric that covers her head and body. Dupatta, as a signifier of honor and respect, is depicted in literature, films, and songs. "Laga chuniri main daagh," which means the shawl is stained, is the title of both an old Hindi song and a contemporary film recently. In conventional households, the metaphor of a stained shawl refers to the impiousness or impurity of a woman. Although illegal, till now, in many tribal communities, even the suspicion of such a claim carries heavy consequences for the woman. Honor killing is an example of this belief.2
The careful folding of a dupatta and keeping it aside while folding the next are manifestations of the above-mentioned discourse. A pile of dupattas with white borders refers to the silent burden of waiting, which is culturally imposed on girls as guardians of their family’s honor. These moral duties are clearly gender-based, and boys are free of such obligations.
Two artists I feel I am in conversation with conceptually are Humaira Abid and Tayeba Begum Lipi. I will now discuss some examples of their work and how it relates to my own practice.
2Honor killing: in certain cultures, the killing of a relative, especially a girl or woman, who is perceived to have brought dishonor to the family
Humaira Abid: (Pakistan):
Humaira Abid is a Pakistani sculptor currently based in the United States. Through wood as her major medium of work, she explores the ideas of gender, patriarchy, and the role of a woman in Pakistani culture. Her visual language comprises everyday domestic objects used by women or mothers in Pakistan. I, therefore, find her work and ideas connected to and conversing with mine. Abid says that "whether women conform to society’s expectations or break the rules and live freely, they are always subject to criticism and targeting." "No matter their choice of lifestyle, their inability to live without judgment is like living life at gunpoint."
Figure 3. Abid-Humaira, Boy? Girl? Boy? Mahogany, Pharwaan and Pine wood, black stain, 53 x 26.5 x 12 inches.3
3 “Home Page,” humaira.com.pk, accessed May 8, 2023,
Figure 4. Abid-Humaira, Love Games - Istri Series, Carved Mahogany, gouache and tea on wasli, clear acrylic, 9.5 x 6 x 8.5 inches, 2007-20134
4 “Humaira Abid | White Turban,” accessed May 8, 2023,
Tayeba Begum Lipi: (Bangaladesh)
Tayeba Begum Lipi creates paintings, prints, videos, and installations articulating themes of female marginality and the female body. Her sculptural works re-create everyday objects, including beds, bathtubs, strollers, wheelchairs, dressing tables, and women’s undergarments, using unexpected materials such as safety pins and razor blades. This purposeful and provocative choice of materials speaks to the violence facing women in Bangladesh as well as referencing tools used in childbirth in the more underdeveloped parts of the country. For me, the use of a single unit in multiples refers to the repetitive nature of the traditional practice Lipi is talking about. I find this idea of employing multiples on a repetitive basis significantly closer to my art practice.
It is quite fascinating how three women artists belonging to the same region, who never got a chance to meet each other or discuss their works amongst themselves, still work about similar concerns and once used a similar visual language through different working media.
Figure 5. Tayeba Begum Lipi, Recallin 3, Stainless steel razor blades, 11 x 9.1 x 21.3”, 20145
5 Kate Sierzputowski, “Stainless Steel Razor Blades Compose Sculptures of Garments and Household Objects by Tayeba Begum Lipi,” Colossal, April 4, 2019.
Figure 6. Tayeba Begum Lipi, Presence, sculpture, stainless steel 12 x 7 x 10” with cord, 20186.
6 “In Conversation with Tayeba Begum Lipi, the Creator of ‘Political Art,’” India Today, accessed May 8, 2023,
Conclusion:
This research project MASHQ is my physical and metaphorical journey towards a cultural belief system. It is a journey towards a blindfolded ideology in which I grew up, and it has clearly left its grave markings on me. It is a system known to me as "patriarchy" or "gender hierarchy." Unfortunately, this culture is not entirely "man-made," but women who believe in it and surrender to it are surely significant supporters of this way of life. This ideology is so deeply engraved in the minds and hearts of its believers that they don’t realize its shortcomings. Unfortunately, the religion (Islam) is used as a manipulative tool to strengthen this system, and a number of misconceptions are accepted in the name of religion.
My work is the only power tool that I am using to awaken the consciousness of these women in Pakistan and in the South Asian region. I want them to understand their worth and their purpose of being on this earth, which is more than just being obediently suppressed, harassed, or assaulted because of their stereotypical gender ideology.
I believe it is a lifetime task to change a centuries-old mindset, and I might not be able to see its result in my lifetime, but I hope what I am sowing through my art will enlighten many, if not everyone.
Bibliography:
Saito, Yuriko. 2021. “Aesthetics of the Everyday.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2021.
MacKethan, Lucinda. 2011. “The Cult of Domesticity – America in Class – Resources for History & Literature Teachers from the National Humanities Center.” America in Class.
June 10, 2011
Himada, Nasrin. (2021) 2021. The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design.
Edited by Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch. 1st ed. p.172, ch.11, Great Britain:
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
“Istari - استَری Meaning in English Is Woman - Urdu to English Dictionary.” n.d.
MeaningIn.com. Accessed May 8, 2023
Bachelard, Gaston. 1971. The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos.
p.104, Boston: Beacon Press.
Heydari, Arash, Ali Teymoori, and Rose Trappes. 2021. “Honor Killing as a Dark Side of Modernity: Prevalence, Common Discourses, and a Critical View.” Social Science Information 60 (1): 86–106.
“Mashq - icreT sI hsilgnE ni gninaeM قش مne - Urdu to English Dictionary.” n.d.
MeaningIn.com. Accessed May 8, 2023.
Sierzputowski, Kate. 2019. “Stainless Steel Razor Blades Compose Sculptures of Garments and Household Objects by Tayeba Begum Lipi.” Colossal. April 4, 2019.
“In Conversation with Tayeba Begum Lipi, the Creator of ‘Political Art.’” n.d. India Today. Accessed May 8, 2023.
Technical Statement:
Before heading towards the recipes, I would like to write down a few of my observations and experiments I did along the way towards my thesis project, Mashq (a practice).
Working within the realm of a restricted miniature scale, the production process of my work is quite meticulous and demands a high level of vigilance and careful handling. The body of work for this project is produced through the slip casting method as well as freehand construction. It took me months to make all of the two thousand miniature irons for a 6 x 6 foot installation, which is also titled Mashq. Each iron is individually slip-cast and cleaned with various numbered sandpapers, blades, and knives. Most of the irons are cast from a single, three-piece plaster mold (figures 7 and 8).
7 8
One of my foremost concerns while working on my thesis project was to achieve maximum plasticity and strength in my clay body so that it would not break when I made fabric like thin sheets of 72 x 36 inches (figure 9) or thread like coils with it (figure 10). To resolve this issue, I started off with tape casting, which helped me produce small notepad-sized individual sheets, but for the work "The Weight of Wait," I had to make sheets similar to the size of a big scarf, preventing them from breaking. So, I took a few of tape casting’s components, like glycerin and Elmer’s glue, and added them to my porcelain clay body to
keep it moister than a regular clay body. Other than this, I also added flex fiber to the clay body, which kept the particles intact.
9 10
The idea of multiplicity or mass production is evident in my work, which led me to make plaster molds for casting porcelain irons and house-shaped beads. whereas the disc beads for the work "stereotypical" were again individually made and fired to cone 10 (figures 11 and 12).
11 12
In order to achieve the whitest tone after firing, I have used twenty percent Grolleg Kaolin (which is really expensive) and fired my pieces to cone 10 in a reduced atmosphere of gas kiln.
Porcelain Clay Body: (^10 Reduction)
Grolleg Kaolin 20%
NZ Kaolin 20%
Custer Feldspar 35%
Silica (Flint) 25%
100%
Veegum/Macaloid 4%
Water 20%
Flex Fiber 1%
Porcelain Casting Slip: (^10 Reduction)
Grolleg Kaolin 20%
NZ Kaolin 20%
Custer Feldspar 35%
Silica (Flint) 25%
100%
Veegum/Macaloid 4%
Water 40%
Darvan 7 0.25 – 0.35 %
Red Stained Clay Body Recipe:
The image (Figure 13) shows circular test tiles in different shades of red. These tile samples are fired to cone 10 and are made from small batches of 100 grams of wet porcelain. Mason stains I have mainly used to make the clay body red are the following:
Dark Red Lobster Red Mango Crimson Delft Blue
Florentine Green Black
13
