Malik Irtiz, Wait

2019-2020. Mixed Media on canvas, 61 x 51 cm. Materials: matchsticks, paint, soot, dry paint, text, and leaf.

Accompanied Text:

In between the long wait, seasons changed while I was scavenging for a night’s sleep. I set out in monsoons and the season of making charcoal is upon us, calling out for snow to mute away the sounds. I struck a matchstick for each day I woke up from slipping away into the unknown. The fire didn’t last long enough and I lost my way to the bed. The waiting is all the bed sheets I have collected now. Stories of surviving; people living through them. sometimes in line, neat and mostly in puddles bursting with rage. Sometimes in flowers, sometimes covered in soot. Seasons went by and I wait.

From the Artist:

Work on Wait began immediately post-abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which gave a special status to the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Conceived during the complete communication and Internet blockade imposed the upon Kashmir by the Indian state, the artist counted used matches as a means of recording the passing of time, while globally the lockdown was monitored in days, hours, minutes and seconds. This process began in late summer and abruptly ended in March 2020. The counting helped to make sense of time and against the violence of abstraction caused by statistics and Indian media reportage of the state.