Artist

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai

Uttar Pradesh · Germany

Chatterjee & Lal

Biography

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai is a Weimar-based artist of Indian origin. Arshi was born in Najibabad and has lived in India and Afghanistan before moving to Germany, where she is currently based. Arshi gained her Undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, and her Graduate degree from the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. Ranging in scale and medium, Arshi has worked to cover a variety of themes. Critiquing the position, agency and lack of it, of the Muslim woman, Arshi produces work that incorporates words and visuals in a manner that might be reminiscent at times of fragments of ancient texts, and of very personal journals at others. In her work, Lihaaf (2020) which took the form of a large quilt, pieced together by several women in her hometown of Najibabad, Arshi speaks of the exchanges – verbal and emotional – that take place while women work together. A more recent work, Nafas (2021) takes the form of a compendium of unsent letters addressed to her husband, baring her deepest anxieties and fears. Motifs like the pomegranate, chair, takhti, gardens and heart appear repeatedly in Arshi’s visuals pointing at her interest in the tense threads that connect womanhood, identity, culture, history and power. While Arshi’s underlying concerns and enquiries as an artist have, to a large extent, remained constant over the years, she has approached her concerns from several perspectives – each uniquely peculiar to her position as a South Asian Muslim woman. Arshi borrows from fable and lore, philosophy and poetry to bring together a compelling case for agency. A first-hand witness of the American evacuation from Afghanistan, and the subsequent siege of Kabul by the Taliban in 2021, Arshi’s works have since functioned as both residue of political chaos (in a very literal sense when she has had to abandon parts of her work and practice while fleeing Afghanistan) as well as a medium through which she communicates the horrors of war and the human condition that lies desperate in its wake. Her work titled Qissah-e-Kabul (2022) is a testimony to the many stories told, untold, and now forever lost in the vast and dense cultural landscape of Afghanistan.

Selected Works