Riaz Mehmood
A diasporic love song for Pashtun people.
Riaz Mehmood, "Baba / The Sage," 2020
digital prints, installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy the artist and AGA, photo by Charles Cousins)
Resistance, preservation and resilience have long been portrayed in the context of violence, pain and death, but that is only one perspective. Where there is resistance, there can also be joy, community and vibrancy.
Riaz Mehmood’s Ghazal – Songs for Home, on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton until Jan. 29, is an interactive exhibition that challenges colonial depictions of Pashtun people, encouraging viewers to see the resilience that radiates from their songs, poems and dances.
Mehmood, now living in Edmonton, grew up in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In 2000, he immigrated to Canada after training as an engineer in Pakistan, hoping to pursue a career in the arts. He studied first at what is now OCAD University in Toronto and then, in 2012, earned an MFA from the University of Windsor.
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Riaz Mehmood, "Ghazal – Songs for Home," 2022
installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (photo by Charles Cousins, courtesy AGA)
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Riaz Mehmood, "Ghazal – Songs for Home," 2022
installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (photo by Charles Cousins, courtesy AGA)
“Whenever I would go back, there was all this misery there, all this destruction, loss of life, property,” says Mehmood. “But still, people were able to be happy and they were able to resist.”
Attan is Mehmood’s video of a traditional Pashtun dance. Pashtuns, an Indo-Iranian ethnic group with a strong sense of tribal kinship, live mainly in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
“I looked at it as a resistance when you continue, or want to continue, the cultural practices,” he says. “It could be as simple as just performing a dance that’s supposed to be part of your culture.”
Riaz Mehmood, "Ishq / Unconditional Love," 2020
interactive video and ghungroo bells, 12 min., installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy the artist and AGA, photo by Charles Cousins)
Each work in this small but memorable show carries forward momentum. In Ishq / Unconditional Love, viewers are invited to shake a pair of ghungroo anklet bells that control the playback speed of a silent video showing a dhamal, a Sufi dance in which devotees move to the beat of a drum. The jingle of the bells fills the otherwise quiet gallery, propelling connection. Anyone can take a turn leading the dancers on the screen and other visitors may follow. It’s much like joining a social or human rights movement – participation has a domino effect.
Riaz Mehmood, "Drai-Sundaray / Three Songs" (detail), 2009, video (courtesy the artist)
Collaboration and documentation are a large aspect of Mehmood’s work. As well, there’s much to unpack about resistance, history and culture. An accompanying publication notes that “documentation and preservation become their own form of resistance in the face of a governmental program of Islamicization that narrows and demarcates the boundaries of accepted practice.”
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Riaz Mehmood, "Chaadar," 2022
dye sublimation print on velvet with embroidery, installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy the artist and AGA, photo by Charles Cousins)
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Riaz Mehmood, "Chaadar," 2022
dye sublimation print on velvet with embroidery, installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy the artist and AGA, photo by Charles Cousins)
Chaadar, a textile piece decorated with English translations of Pashto-language poet Hamza Baba’s couplets, is testimony to the spirituality of Mehmood’s homeland and an impressive monument to memory. Drai-Sundaray / Three Songs, a video projection of women from the nomadic Kutanree tribe singing, helps preserve their oral traditions, at risk of loss amid travel bans and armed conflicts.
“From colonial time, the way that Pashtuns are written about or shown in images is like a savage kind of warrior, sometimes a noble warrior, depending on what angle they are looking at, and always prone to extremism and just frozen in time,” says Mehmood. “The mainstream Pakistan, or the government side of Pakistan, instead of challenging these stereotypes of Pashtuns, they kept them perpetuating because it was in their own interest.”
Charles Cousins
Riaz Mehmood, "Dividing Line," 2022
watercolour on paper and digital print, installation view at Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (courtesy the artist and AGA, photo by Charles Cousins)
The final piece, Dividing Line, commemorates Mehmood’s vision of community while commenting on colonial power structures that continue to exist. The piece features cut-out watercolour portraits of contemporary and historical figures positioned against a photomontage of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa landscape. It shows how Pashtun people belong to ancestral territories – yet have been excluded from them during decades of demarcation and destruction along national, religious and ideological lines.
It’s difficult to choose one work that speaks best to this diasporic love song. Its rich and varied wonders will linger in the minds of anyone who accepts Mehmood’s invitation to partake in the joys of the Pashtun people. ■
Riaz Mehmood, Ghazal – Songs for Home, at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton from Oct. 22, 2022, to Jan. 29, 2023.
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