”Language tries to untangle what is on our minds”. Artist, Shaan Syed has provided a language on ‘partition’ in his work ‘The Judge’s Quarters’
A return visit to Ab-Anbar Gallery was always to be on our to do list in London. We had been there before. It so happened that a panel reviewing an exhibition by artist, Shaan Syed was scheduled for this afternoon.
We were not disappointed; in fact overwhelmed and challenged by the panel including the artist as they weaved their way through the art, its language, its relevance and its impact. The partition of India in 1947 that plays out in the lives lost in that upheaval then and today were revealed through art, architecture, heritage and history.
The panelists were compelling in their capacity to reveal the work through their own eyes whilst the artist reflected on the work as it emerged from his own personal experience and came to represent those who today are partitioned by colonialism.
‘The Judge's Quarters’ takes its starting point from a room inside London’s eighteenth century courthouse in Clerkenwell, a preserved Regency interior that still carries the traces of past juridical authority and imperial governance.
The panel discussion we experienced brought together the artist with Emily Mann, an architectural historian, Ellen Greg, a curator and gallery director and Aanchal Malhotra, an author and oral historian who spoke from New Delhi.
Together, they explored the symbolic weight of architecture, the history of painting, and the legacy of the 1947 Partition of India.
The evening concluded with a Shiraz beer inspired by Persian heritage and in conversations with those present and the artist.
