LC: You are an educator and a widely exhibited artist and were awarded a residency at the Wassaic Project in 2022. What was your experience in the residency, and did it result in new directions for your own work or for your role as an educator?

SM: I came to Wassaic with no prior self-articulated expectations and hopes, but an openness to absorb and accept any change that comes from a changed environ, to displace usual creative approaches, replacing them with a fresh perspective. The bucolic setting with grazing horses, roof patterns on Gridley Chapel and Luther barn, weathered tree-trunks or split plane tree nuts, were details big and small to think about in relevance of important versus trivial. I did not produce any finished work, but musings and self-debates set the stage for my next body of work. Being in a historic setting where the past was very present with an urgency for renewal, gave me a new understanding for bridging my own past and present in a symbiosis of cultural heritage and lived experiences. It helped forge creative partnerships for two-way conversations when creating between two worlds. My slow processes facilitated targeted thinking to amalgamate message and presentation. My studio at Wassaic was not technically a textile studio, and many happy errors happened on the way. It reminded me of my textiles mentor‘s encouragement not to be too hard on myself, a dictum I actively took back to the classroom. I now emphasized shibori techniques as starting points in surface design exploration rather than seeking mastery of perfecting the techniques. Hence, students who only had brief exposure to dyeing, gained relevant knowledge for future explorations in self-expression. A relaxed spirit was a more creative spirit indeed.

LC: You grew up in Pakistan in a family with strong textile and needlecraft traditions. How does your inherited cultural background play into your work?

SM: In a post-colonial society of Victorian era traditions, young girls were trained in needlecraft skills. With nationhood came greater awareness of traditional crafts, which became part of our family archives. My great grandmother was an influencer, whose extensive knowledge of Central Asian textiles, especially of her ancestral birthplace in Ferghana valley, informed and inspired us. With the 1947 partitioning between Pakistan and India, many of our cultural connections were ruptured, but my mother kept textile traditions alive in our home. She was an active collector, acquiring local embroidery from places where we were stationed. A college educated, award-winning embroiderer, she insured continuation of skilled needlework along with higher education for her daughters. I grew up surrounded by rich textiles from suzani to phulkari, from khes to rilli, from formal, ceremonial, gold embellished apparel to fine carpets. The plethora of pattern and color in my environment had a vivid impact on my formative work till I came to Pratt Institute to study industrial design. In the 1970’s culture at Pratt and in New York, beauty was a dirty word and anything to do with brilliant hues or decoration was relegated to the backwaters of art history. It has taken years of de-learning, re-learning and eventually melding cultural and acquired knowledge to arrive at my current level of comfort in selectively using every tool at my disposal to narrate my message. I am comfortable creating work like White Bend or Passage West, or employing calligraphy, gilding, printmaking.

LC: Your varied artistic practice includes innovative three-dimensional work with textiles, embroidery, and intricate dyeing techniques, such as shibori, all of which involve demanding and intensive processes. What engages you about the actual process of creating these beautiful works?

SM: In a search for divine within matter, I work with slow, rhythmic, meditative processes that facilitate self-healing and understanding of our natural world. I follow my ancestral Sufi teachings, especially from the inventor of ikat, Khwaja Bahauddin Naqshbandi, who taught us to work with our hands, believe with our hearts. In coming to terms with natural or human created diasasters, the march of repetitive stitching is a chant, a prayer for personal calm and universal peace. The crescendo is pulling the mold out of its fabric skin to behold a perfect replica of something like heavy, dense stone, transubstantiated into an ethereal, translucent, weightless, hologram like artwork. Or, when deconstructing patiently constructed stitching and binding, the fabric opens to reveal exquisite surface patterns. This magical joy of disbelief in process dependent material transmutation, makes my processes an exciting and unending quest for possibilities within textile manipulation from flat to sculptural, plain to patterned, white to explosive color.

LC: In this exhibition, you are showing a series of six works that involve embroidery embellished with mirror work. This traditional technique originated in the 17th century and can be found throughout southwest Asia and the Indian subcontinent. In your pieces, the mirrors are rather densely placed, so that when standing in front of the work, the viewer sees their own reflection embedded in a field of embroidery. In addition to your cultural connection to this technique, what is your intention with its use?

SM: Placing mirrors in pixelated proximity without embroidered fillers is typical of the Rabari and Banjara nomadic tribes that had once roamed the lower riparian Indus River Valley. Ancient civilizations in the region, like Mohenjo Daro, had traded with mirror producing Egyptians, making use of mirror, shell and stone embellishments likely. There is no record of Mohenjo Daro population’s fate, but could these tribes be their off shoots, carrying evolutionary, genetically embedded memories of water in their craft? When a light source moves along the tapestry face, different areas ripple like sunlight or moonshine on water, creating areas of brightness, of hope. Barely contributing to global warming, Pakistan nevertheless suffers its worst consequences. Seeing themselves reflected in images responding to flood waters, makes the viewer complicit in the crisis, and responsible for remedial mitigation. These works communicate cause and effect to inform industrialized perpetrators about undeserved loss and trauma at the other end of the world.

LC: You have said that these radiant works reference the catastrophic floods in Pakistan in 2022. How did you arrive at combining embroidery and the mirror work (which can be viewed as watery) to reflect with such beauty and serenity on devastating loss and destruction?

SM: My visual vocabulary shies away from images of war and destruction. Today, such scenes are profusely captured digitally and broadcast in real time, making us collectively immune to horrors of individual human stories. I choose to dwell on images that dignify the impacted, show glimpses of hope, of possibilities, of potential through industry within community presences. Regional crafts from Pakistan are not celebrated adequately within the larger fiber community. Using mirror work on an extensive scale in a labor of love, pairing it especially with fast disappearing phulkari work, created pride of heritage for a craft fast falling victim to machine facsimiles. Showing calm and serenity created a space for sharing and shedding. My practice aims to create moments of quietude, and an escape from surrounding chaos to reflect on our existential future as a global community.