Artwork from Afghanistan survives epic journey
Tapestries smuggled from under noses of Taliban feature in exhibition at gallery
After an incredible journey, spanning nearly 14,000 kilometres and involving an extremely fraught border crossing, three tapestries are now on display in a New Plymouth art gallery.
The tapestries are not small pieces of art. The largest of the three measures over nine metres by four metres, yet they were smuggled out of Afghanistan under the very noses of the Taliban to get here.
Their journey is incredible, and so too is the artistic journey of their creator, Khadim Ali, and the story of his family.
Khadim was born in Quetta, Pakistan, but that is not where he considers himself to be from.
“I am Hazari from Bamiyan.” Bamiyan is the Ali family’s ancestral home, and Khadim and his siblings are the third generation to be have been born in exile from their homeland, a result of persecution over many decades against the Hazari people, he says.
Bamiyan is located in what is now known as Afghanistan, but Khadim does not define himself as Afghani.
“The name Afghanistan was imposed upon us, it is putting one thing over all other ethnicities. I am not Afghan Hazari, I am Hazari.”
While now Hazari make up under 20 per cent of the population of Afghanistan, they were once the largest Afghan ethnic group, constituting nearly two-thirds of the population of the country before the 19th century.
It is estimated more than half of the Hazari population were massacred, forced to flee or taken into slavery during the 1891-93 Hazara War.
When people are persecuted, they lose much more than simply a home, says Khadim, and that sense of loss is reflected in his work.
“To live in exile, to be persecuted, you lose so much. Your sense of belonging, the history, the tales we tell, the references we have, our connections, it can all be destroyed. Our entire history is wiped out by the actions of others.”
He points to the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 as one way this happened.
“Before then, people went to Bamiyan to see them and there they also learned about the Hazari, about our history our art and our culture. They have destroyed this and wiped all that out.”
Khadim grew up in the family home in Quetta, and was greatly influenced by his grandfather, and the stories of the Shahnameh, he says.
“The Shahnameh is a book written in the Ghazni Province of Afghanistan, in 1010AD at the court of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi. He was the sultan of the Hazari and that was a glorious time of art in Afghanistan.”
Khadim studied art, first in Lahore, then Tehran, before studying for his masters at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
In the rubble, the only thing to survive was a rug given to my mother by her mother . . .
“At first, I was interested in the painting of miniatures, the very intricate scenes, that was the art I created, that style of art of the classical Mughal miniatures, it was very fragile.”
Then, something happened that changed his direction.
“It was August 31, in 2011, there was a suicide bomber who blew himself up, right next to my parents’ home, my childhood home in Quetta. My parents were both brutally injured and the whole house was destroyed.”
His parents came to Australia where Khadim was, but of that childhood home, only one thing survived.
“In the rubble, the only thing to survive was a rug given to my mother by her mother, who must also have been given it by her mother. It was still there, and is still with my family as now it is with my sister.
“Seeing that rug gave me the realisation of what a resilient medium of art weaving and embroidery is to survive an explosion like that. So I began to learn about weaving and embroidery, to look at it as an artist and to learn how to develop myself in this medium.”
Khadim began to explore the artistic medium of weaving and embroidery.
“I wanted to really understand it all, the nature of it and the artistic possibilities it came with. I liked the contrast, it is resilient but also fragile.”
Khadim set up a studio in Dashte-Barchi in western Kabul, visiting it often from his home in Australia. He employed some local artisans as his assistants who worked from the studio along with some local women who would work from home on looms.
For almost a decade Khadim’s studio was a platform for the exchange of ideas and thoughts, as well as producing art.
Then the Taliban came back. Under Taliban law, art is forbidden,
Khadim Ali
says Khadim. “A lot of art was discarded, as we know the Taliban hate all art, they oppose all picture making, anything like that, so much was discarded or destroyed. It had to be, it was a matter of life or death for the artists. I didn’t want any of them to get killed because of what they did.” His team were in the process of organising some of the tapestries to be sent to Australia but before that happened, the Taliban entered Kabul. “The chaos started. People were running for their lives, trying to get out. My assistants were going to try to get over the border to Pakistan and they had the idea to take the tapestries with them disguised as cushions.” They successfully got as far as the bus terminal in Kandahar, where the group saw members of the Taliban questioning people, says Khadim. “The Taliban were checking each person and their luggage, so they decided to leave the cushions at the bus station with the left luggage.” To cross the border into Pakistan, the group sought help from a people smuggler, says Khadim. “We asked him if he was able to find the cushions, we promised him a lot of money if he could.” This got the man’s interest and he went back to the bus station to look. He found one cushion, which was being used as a seat by a stallholder who was selling the left luggage items. “It had been stabbed and cut, it was badly damaged.” Khadim’s team had one cushion back but were still missing two. Then the storekeeper reached out to them, offering to get some men to help search the packed store for the cushions. Money exchanged hands and the cushions were found, again badly damaged by bayonets. All three tapestries made their way to Quetta where Khadim’s assistants worked to repair the damage to the artwork before they went on to Australia before the final step of their journey to New Zealand for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery exhibition of Khadim’s work, There Is No Other Home But This. Govett-Brewster gallery director Zara Stanhope says unpacking the tapestries was emotional. “It had been a real rollercoaster experience, the journey these tapestries had made, so that moment of actually seeing them, stepping back and realising they are here, it was a really special moment.” Zara had seen Khadim’s work in the past and was “blown away” by it, leading to her approaching him with the idea of an exhibition in Aotearoa New Zealand. “We’re beyond excited that these works are about to be seen for the first time in Aotearoa. This exhibition is going to be exceptional.” While the three tapestries on display tell a story, so does another part of the exhibition, says Khadim. “I have created an animation which is projected onto a carpet. It is in two parts in a way, there is a really obvious scene change, from history to now. You see the past, then you see the helicopters and people leaving Kabul in the modern day.”