Muzna Malik

It is a place to record memories and to relive past — as a Store house. It becomes a playful metaphor of spatiality, activated by light and shadow. Hence, a narrative is crocheted which creates an idyllic landscape. Some hidden alphabets are crafted as day stamps and can be read as a mnemonic landscape.

This cubicle becomes a place of revival and survival of past through resurrection of involuntary memories into an organic and sacred realm.

This crochet is an act of bodily memory, where mind and body are closely connected, creating a dialogue. This realm is a residue of day dreaming with a perfect place for a wanderer to drift and for constant digging into past.

The artist has never experienced this house, yet through narrations of rich family history which continued to live in the artist's spatial memories a dynamic experiential quality is represented for her absence.

This house was owned by the artist's grandfather who was a draftsman by profession. It had a balanced adaptation of traditional and modern architectural elements. Traditional dark green wooden carved screens and a blend of simple geometrical patterns, was a perfect blend of the two styles.

The artist's paternal grandfather was an engineer by profession and constructed a functional dupilex house. Later, it was inhabited by artist's uncles in each portion. Its outlook got changed over the years with inhabition of different generations in the family. Th artist visited this childhood home frequently to meet her cousins and resulted into many blissful — making this place feel like a Home.

The artist has knitted this house to explore her scenic childhood memories, as a refuge for day dreaming and reconnecting with loved ones. Hence,one can rearrange composition of these knitted objects and create a story out of it.

These knitted belongings look different than reality, while presenting a distorted image rather than a real one of memories. It consists of living and non-living ones.

The artist shifted into this lively location and having first ever — to reside in an old part of city in her long time stay in Europe. This reminds her of previous residences back in Lahore, while it resembles a lot in appearance and character. Residing on first floor provided a watch over character onto street, likewise, House No.1.

The interior is partially authentic and refurbished, but it still holds a nostalgia of antiquity.

Muzna Malik, the artist, has used Metaphorical crochet as a tool for her artistic expression. In her work she has adapted the traditional Kashmiri outfit “Pheran” as a comment on the contemporary conditions of the citizens of the State under the Indian siege. The issue of Kashmir has deep rooted political history steeped in the colonial past of the region. Malik’s work strongly expresses and re-connects her with her Kashmiri ancestral roots.

It is a web, made out of crocheted wool and synched with sounds with a hanging house on top.
These sounds are of random in nature, crocheted into a cocoon of sounds as a place of refuge.This soundscape represents places and people with whom the artist has encountered over the years and has left a strong impact on her mind.It is a combination of all places she has visited and lived so far. This web is kept endless, as long as the journey continues and keeps adding to the artist´s memory.