Ideally, as artists, we would always be free to wander off into spaces far removed from reality, spaces filled with imagination. Artists are always looking for material around them for inspiration, but every so often, it becomes difficult to be constantly influenced or motivated. Enter the artists’ residency.
These residencies give artists, writers, curators and others in creative fields an opportunity to get away, even if for a spell, from their everyday environment. Be it a different country or city, a forested area or an isolated situation, residencies allow artists to remove themselves from their routines and create work inspired by their temporary surroundings. Such was our happy lot at the Murree Museum Artist Residency, organised by Saba Khan.
The peace, the calm, the creativity of the 'non-place'
The point of a residency is that, sometimes, experience can hold more prestige than tangibility
Situated in a quiet, calm corner of Kashmir Point after a few sharp bends in the road is a house that hosted six artists from different cities and countries (Pakistan, Japan, South Korea and Australia): Seema Nusrat, Shakeela Haider, Hyun Ju Kim, Hiroshi Tachibana, Mahyha Leghari (the coordinator of the residency) and I. Quddus Mirza, the eminent art critic and head of department at the National College of Arts, also came up for the weekend to hold studio visits and discussions. We made friends with each other during walks to Kashmir Point and Mall Road, sipping hot chocolate and buying the obligatory tourist umbrellas.
Our conversations were vast, familiar, strange and, in the strictest sense of the word, intense. We spoke regularly of the different creepy-crawlies we encountered, the goats, the fog, the food. We stared relentlessly at tourists and they stared back at us, each perhaps thinking of the other as peculiar. Our time in Murree was surreal – for what can be more surreal than a town plastered with tourists, hotels and fog?
Gujjar children draw in chalk on the pavement
Murree, bustling with sightseers and holidaymakers, was warm grey and lush green when the sky was clear. There was much to explore of its rich history. In leaving behind our cities, studios and everyday lives, Murree appeared to us as a non-place: the transient space that lies between reality and fiction. We entered as individuals and without an agenda, leaving art to chance and yet somewhere in our heads lingered a plan to paint the hills red…
Like some residencies, the Murree Museum Artist Residency reflected the idea that art needn’t always be objectified, thrust into a frame and hung on a wall – that sometimes experience can hold more prestige than tangibility. The idea here is to let something come naturally rather than constructing it. The five of us consistently explored our surroundings, spent time with children from the nearby gypsy community, involving them in art activities, discovered interesting histories and eventually ventured further into things that inspired us individually. At the day’s end, we spoke recklessly of our ideas (or of not having any) and then sat down to watch a film.
Residency artists with gujjar children
With a set of chance operations and material logistics, we set out to note down our thoughts. While Kim, Hiroshi and Shakeela spent time jotting down their thoughts on paper and wasli in the beautifully lit studios, Seema and I (working as a collective) took to wandering about in abandoned properties that were imbued with fantastic stories and histories.
The residency was, therefore, not only refreshing in the best sense of the word, but also extremely useful in dispersing one’s habitual daily routine – so that if old ways are destroyed, new experiences are revealed. Indeed, the residency is that dramatic love affair involving both the need for reassurance and of discovery and risk.
